When you are hungry and on the go, opting for fast food can really be a life savior. It is tasty, quick, and best of all, easy to grab. However, it is also packed with calories, sodium, sugar, and fat—often enough in a meal for the whole day or even more. And if you are feeding the whole family, it can be expensive as well-oftentimes more so than cooking right at home.
Fast food options and menus are so tricky when you are watching your weight or health. Finding nutritious, well-balanced meal in most convenient food restaurant is quite a challenge. However there are always healthier choices hidden among diet disasters. You just have to know where to find it and how to order it.
Can Fast Food be Healthy?
The truth is that it is very hard to follow healthy diet when you consume fast foods on regular basis. Fast food restaurants usually use the cheapest ingredients possible so as to keep the costs low. That means foods which otherwise can be pondered healthy may not be when they are order from fast food chain. For instance, cheese can be a great source of calcium and protein, yet the cheese topping the burger or covering the pizza is most likely to be heavily processed and also made from non-dairy products. The same thing goes for chicken, meat, and eggs. Fast food is typically high in trans-fat, hidden sugar, unhealthy saturated fat, calories, and sodium. Right at the same time, that tends to be poor in nutrients and nearly totally lacking in veggies, fruits, and fibers.
That does not mean that you have to prevent fast food. It is OK to indulge craving every once in a while, yet to remain healthy you cannot make it regular habit; consuming fast food on regular basis will nearly surely have negative impact on your health. The main key is, as most people say, moderation-both in how frequent you include fast food chains and what you want to order once you are there. There are always some options that you can make which are healthier than are others. The following tips as well as menu recommendation will help you to remain on track.
Just make sure you remember even the healthiest fast food choices oftentimes have nutritional shortcoming. As such, you need to try keeping fast food to the occasional treat.
First off, you should keep your whole meal to 500 calories or, even better, less. The average adult consumes 836 calories each fast food meal-and underestimates what they consume by 175 calories. So do not guess! Most chains post nutritional information both at the franchise location and on their website. Make sure you take the advantage of such information.
Second, you should opt for foods which are lower in fat and higher in protein as well as fiber. You should look for items which have more good stuff, such as whole grains, fiber, and high-quality protein. In addition, you should aim for options which are quite low in saturated fats-while not every saturated fat is bad for you, most of these which are present in fast food restaurants are.
