SubscribeGood-For-You Fast Food
Into every life a little fast food must fall. Sometimes you’re on the road or rushing between meetings or trying to get something to eat between work and the kid’s soccer game. So while we all preach about avoiding the dangers of fast food, it is an unfortunate, but inevitable, fact of life. At some point in time, you will find yourself at a fast food restaurant. The key is to minimize the damage. If you’re eating at the standard fast food joints like McDonald’s or Burger King, I wish ye luck. Sure, they have salads, but most of those aren’t exactly healthful. However, a bit of searching turns up a few pretty decent alternatives to the typical fast food.
First, for those living in either Atlanta or Roswell, there is Boneheads. I haven’t eaten there, but I saw the link on another site (can’t recall the site so I can’t give any link love…sorry). Check out the menu; grilled fish and seasoned chicken are the feature items and you can get them topped with pineapple salsa, sauteed mushrooms, or cucumber lime yogurt. And then there are the side items. While you do find seasoned fries, there are some downright good selections here: grilled zucchini and marinated broccoli. Where else can you get grilled salmon with pineapple salsa and a side of broccoli quickly?
Ok, unfortunately Boneheads is available to relatively few of us, myself included. For the rest of us, there are Chipotle Mexican Grill, Moe’s Southwest Grill, or Qdoba, at least one of which is available in nearly every major city. The beauty of these three chains is that they all serve real meat and have fresh selections that you can use to put together a pretty decent quick meal. Sometimes on Fridays, I don’t feel like cooking after a long week of work, so I’ll grab something from Moe’s or Qdoba that is pretty dang awesome for a cheat meal. There are no Chipotles here in Louisville, but my order there was always a Burrito Bowl (burrito with no tortilla), hold the rice and beans, extra peppers and onions, pico de gallo, hot salsa, and guacamole. I had my protein, a few vegetables, some fat from the guacamole, and other than the salt and (likely) polyunsaturated cooking oils, it was a well-rounded quick meal. You can find something similar at both Moe’s and Qdoba. And Chipotle could have the best restaurant guacamole ever. It’s not as good as mine, but it’s really good and adds a nice serving of fat to your meal. Moe’s has a nice salsa bar, so you can get some more vegetables in their mostly natural state.
For the California, Colorado, Texas, and Hawaii readers, you have Wahoo’s Fish Taco. I have had this one time in Denver, when I was in Colorado skiing a few years back. The menus vary with region, but invariably you’ll find grilled fish (duh!), chicken, and steak with rice and beans. Rice and beans aren’t optimal from a nutrition standpoint, but they also aren’t the worst things you can eat. They beat wheat any day of the week. Check the nutritional info and you’ll find that their salads are all high in protein with a good serving of fat and relatively low carbs. And you can get sauteed vegetables.
The overriding theme seems to be grilled with vegetables and/or fruit. All of these fast food places feature grilled fish, chicken, pork, and/or beef. Chipotle even serves meats raised without hormones and antibiotics. Obviously none of these are as optimal as cooking your own whole foods-based meals at home. Maybe “Good-For-You” is a touch exaggerated, but these are truly some options that you won’t kick yourself for eating 10 minutes later or have you feeling like death for the next few hours. They are all high in salt, so your mouth might feel like the Sahara, and if you aren’t careful you can take quite a shot of processed carbs from a tortilla or two (or even unprocessed white rice and beans), but in a pinch they beat the alternatives.
These are just a few of the options that came to me off the top of my head. What are your favorite fast food options for when you want to keep it pretty healthful, but have to grab something quick?
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Filed in Restaurants and Fast Food 7 Comments so far
Anna in San Diego, CA on 23 Sep 2007 at 4:22 pm #
Hi Scott,
I agree, in modern life it isn’t easy to complete avoid fast food, especially when traveling long distances by car or air. My approach is similar to yours. Stick to a protein source, preferably grilled, and veggies.
I also like Chipotle very much. There is one right down the road from me and we used it a lot when our kitchen was torn apart for remodeling. I also get the Bol, with romaine lettuce instead of beans and rice. I love the carnitas there. And the overall approach of this chain, while perhaps not perfect, is quite a departure from the typical fast food chain operation.
I have tried Wahoo a couple times; I had a salad with grilled fish both times. It was very good, but personally, I’m not wild about spicy salad dressing flavors. And I tend to avoid salad dressings because it is usually made with lousy oils. Salads with out dressing are well, nude, though. I suppose if I go back I wlll ask for salsa like I do at Chipotle.
We also sometimes (on the rare time we eat out at fast places) go to Noodles & Co., because my 9 yo likes it. My husband and I get the Med Salad with grilled steak or chicken or both. Sort of a greek salad variation with kalamata olives, feta, romaine & baby spinach.
We also like Rubio’s fish tacos, also very close to us. We get the Fish Taco Especials, and I eat one with the corn tortilla and eat another with fork (open the torilla and eat the middle stuff, leaving the torilla). That will give me a blood glucose reading at the top of an acceptable level for me.
We also like In ‘N Out burgers, protein style (wrapped in lettuce without the bun), with grilled onions. In So Cal that is a good option. The book Fast Food Nation has good things to say about the company, too, such as good wages, benefits, etc.
That brings up a point about burgers. I have rarely found a burger place now that won’t prepare a burger without the bun. BK & McDs will put it in a small plastic container, but others, like Carl’s Jr. and In N Out wrap the burger in lettuce leaves (a bit messy, I advise using a fork). I sometimes get one or two burgers this way instead of a salad because I need the protein more than the lettuce (choose one that comes with tomato and some lettuce if possible). Then I eat it with a knife and fork. That works, but don’t drive!
We also like to try to find local “joints” if we have the time, but that is hit or miss when on the road. Sometimes it’s great and sometimes it is worse than fast food options (”no, we can’t fry your eggs in butter, we don’t even have any butter here, we have grill grease and buttery spread”).
When we drive, we now have a portable navigator device (nice gift from my husband’s lab staff). I discovered that we can look up a lot of food possibilities on our route. On our way to see an LA Galaxy game we looked up the Trader Joe’s we would be passing along the way and stopped in at one to get some prepared salads to eat before the game, and snacks to eat at the game (nuts & jerky). We didn’t need to stand in line for the lousy stadium food options that way (ok, I had a nice Newcastle ale). I’ll be using that navigator feature more often. Last weekend in Ohio I used it to look up the phone number of the crowded Chipotle Grill I was parked next to and call in a take-out order. Saved lots of time in line.
Traveling by air is awful for food options, as I don’t have ugrade options or get bumped up out of steerage, I mean coach. like my husband often does. The box snacks offered by airlines are not good choices for me at all as they are completely empty carbs. I would have blood sugars higher than the flying altitude I fear. So I often need to buy something in the airport. Chicken Caesar salads are usually my best choice, minus the croutons.
Nutrition » Good-For-You Fast Food on 24 Sep 2007 at 3:34 am #
[...] Diffley wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptIf you’re eating at the standard fast food joints like McDonald’s or Burger King, I wish ye luck. Sure, they have salads, but most of those aren’t exactly healthful. However, a bit of searching turns up a few pretty decent alternatives … [...]
Scott Kustes on 24 Sep 2007 at 10:04 am #
Anna, I’ve heard good things about Rubio’s. You Southern Cali’ans get all the good stuff. Great weather, the ocean, and better eateries than us midwesterners. Qdoba and Moe’s are about the only chains I can think of that make it easy to eat fairly well. As a friend of mine said, “most people in Louisville still think biscuits, gravy, and cigarettes is a good breakfast.” Actually being conscious of the things you eat is just starting to take hold here.
Air travel is horrid for eating options. I used to travel 100% of the time and I always took my own food. As you said, nuts and homemade jerky.
Surprise, surprise, I haven’t heard of Noodles and Company either as it doesn’t exist here. Our options really are mainly McD’s, Subway, Wendy’s, Burger King, and the rest of their ilk.
Oh well, good thing I like cooking.
Cheers
Scott
Anna in San Diego, CA on 24 Sep 2007 at 2:54 pm #
Yup, homecooked is nearly always the best option. I can whip up an easy egg fritatta much faster than I can order delivery or take-out food, and for far less money. Eating low carb has reinvigorated my cooking interest and lowered our convenience food expenses.
And I’ll agree, So Cal is a good place to be stuck (I’m a transplant from the Right Coast who would happily leave So Cal for some other places). But I sure enjoy escaping from here now and then. We’ve got a lot of good stuff as you mentioned, but we also have a lot of traffic, high housing costs, etc. It isn’t all paradise, I can assure you :-).
I was in the Dayton, OH outskirts last weekend and I reveled in driving numerous back roads, criss-crossing through farms, and avoiding the highways. Here it is hard to go anywhere without getting on a freeway. I loved seeing dairy cows and beeves on green GRASS pastures instead of in stinky CAFOs, with a picturesque red barn in the background. I guess the grass is greener…
Jane on 26 Sep 2007 at 1:58 am #
Doc’s Greens! Really, really wonderful. Fresh roasted chicken and turkey (no kidding, there’s a guy standing there carving the birds as needed), grilled steak, baked ham…..choice of romaine, spinach or field greens and every other awesome salad add-ins you could think of. All tossed with choice of dressing in a big steel bowl, then served on a real ceramic plate, to be eaten with real flatware. But fast! A little more expensive than a value meal at Burger King, but worth it IMHO. Set up kind of like a cafeteria. Plenty of sandwiches on the menu for your carb-snarfing companions too. I’m in Florida, but they have locations in GA, TX, NC and KS too. Except for the salad dressings, which I’m sure contain the typical soybean oil, it’s hard to beat for healthy fast food.
Scott Kustes on 26 Sep 2007 at 9:46 am #
Hey Jane, you just reminded me of another place that was pretty good, but unfortunately I can’t recall the name of it. I was on a project in St. Paul, MN and the food court had a place were I could get a nice-sized chicken salad with romaine, black olives, bacon, red onions, tomatoes, and fresh avocado with basalmic vinaigrette. The salad came with half an avocado, but they were willing to throw the whole thing on there for me for no extra charge. As you said, the dressing was probably soybean oil, but other than that, it’s a nice meal for a road warrior.
If anyone lives in St. Paul and uses the food court near Wabasha St, please let me know what the name of this place is.
Cheers
Scott
Modern Forager » Blog Archive » Guacamole on 27 Sep 2007 at 9:41 pm #
[...] my Good-For-You Fast Food post, I mentioned my awesome guacamole. I may be biased, but I’ve also heard good things from [...]