The healthiest restaurant meals in Britain - and some to avoid

How to make a healthy choice when you're eating out. By Eleanor Stride

It should be a treat to go to a restaurant - but it can be misery if you're trying to shed a few pounds or keeping a watchful eye on the amount of fat, salt and sugar you eat. Encouraged by a new government initiative, some restaurants are at last realising we want information to help us make the right menu choices. We put eight high-street favourites to the test - and found there's still a long way to go...

 

 

Know your numbers
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) lists the following Guideline Daily Amounts:
Calories: women = 2,000; men = 2,500
Total fat: women = 70g; men = 95g
Saturated fat: women = 20g; men = 30g
Salt: women = 6g; men = 6g

 

From Spanish tapas to traditional pub grub, there's a huge variety of family-friendly high-street restaurants where you can eat out for a reasonable price. But when you're watching your weight, a lack of information about the food on the menu can cause you to make choices that are laden with hidden salt, fat and sugar. Don't they realise it drives women (and men) mad?

 

Eating out accounts for almost a third of the amount we spend on food as a nation. So it's welcome news that as well as the Government's multimillion pound anti-obesity strategy, there is now a Food Standards Agency (FSA) project that aims to encourage restaurants to make it easy for customers to choose healthy meals. Three cheers to that!

 

So how does it work in practice? All eight restaurant chains we visited offered two or more reasonably healthy main courses, while the more limited choice of healthy desserts seemed less of a worry as you're more likely to skip the pudding when you're trying to lose weight. Harvester, Pizza Express and Wetherspoon, all of which have responded enthusiastically to the FSA initiative, were the restaurants that made it easiest for our sleuths to choose a healthy meal, thanks to menus that
pointed out low-calorie and low-fat choices. However, those are not
necessarily the chains that offer the healthiest selection of meals overall, according to GH nutritionist Anita Bean. She was more impressed by the menu at Wagamama, where there's currently no nutritional information, but where the dishes contain lots of vegetables.

 

None of the restaurants claims to offer an entirely healthy menu, so she wasn't able to award high scores to any of them. What changes would she like to see? ‘Restaurants should offer a greater choice of portion sizes, sell less fried food, include more vegetables and focus on lowering the saturated fat, sugar and salt content of all their menu options.'

 

The GH health sleuths in action
We sent a team of volunteer tasters to eight popular restaurant chains around the country in an effort to find out just how easy it is for those wanting to make a healthier choice. Then we asked GH nutritionist Anita Bean to analyse the whole menu from each chain and determine the
best healthy meal choices on offer. Where available, we've included nutritional information for Anita's chosen dishes, as it appears in the restaurants or on their websites. But at the time of going to press,
several chains were unable or unwilling to provide us with any detailed nutritional information at all. In these health-conscious times, we say that's not good enough!

 

Find out which restaurant chains make healthier eating easy...

(there's a link back to this page)

 

 

Good Housekeeping says:
Calorie labelling on shop-bought food is nothing new, so it's high time the restaurant industry gave us all the opportunity to make informed choices. As a nation we're definitely more aware of the need to watch what we eat, but it's still the case that almost 20% of British adults are now obese. One in six meals are consumed outside the home, so it's clear restaurants need to provide nutritional information and healthy meal options. We applaud the restaurants that are doing this already - now it's time for others to follow their lead.

 

Your strategy for healthy eating out

Nutritionist Anita Bean says...

● Steer clear of any dish described as creamy, crispy, breaded, cheesy, battered, sautéed or fried.

● Start with a simple salad or a low-calorie soup - both will take the edge off your appetite - but avoid the bread basket.
● Request a starter size or child's portion of a main dish.
● Ask the waiter to substitute high-fat items such as chips or fries with salad or plain vegetables.
● Order fresh fruit or sorbet for dessert. If you can't resist a richer
pudding, share it with a friend.
● Share a main course and order your own salads or extra side dishes
of vegetables to fill you up.
● Save calories by limiting the amount of alcohol you consume. Too much alcohol also weakens your resolve to make healthy choices.
● When ordering a pizza, opt for one with vegetable toppings and goat's cheese instead of mozzarella.
● Slow your eating by keeping pace with the slowest eater at your table.
Savour the flavours in your meal.

 

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