Kids growing up today will likely eat restaurant meals more frequently than ever before for the same reasons the adults in their life are - pace of life and 24/7 easy access and availability. So yes, our kids need the skills and strategies to eat healthy restaurant meals even more than adults do now. It’s up to the adults in their life to teach them these skills. Please do!

Frequent restaurant meals have been shown to contribute to obesity-related health problems in kids. Kids and teens often eat foods at or from fast food chains, sandwich shops or pizza joints. Research shows kids who regularly eat restaurant meals consume more calories, total fat and saturated fat than those who do not. And, as you would guess, they eat fewer servings of fruits, vegetables and milk. 

Here are a few tips to put into action: 

• Make healthy eating in restaurants a family affair. Don’t practice special occasion thinking. 
• Develop family guiding principles for restaurant eating. That’s how you’ll order and eat together in restaurants.  
• Think of ordering, or better stated coordinating, your meal as a family negotiation. Have all family members discuss the items they’re interested in sharing. This typically provides ample food for everyone and  offers teachable moments for children to learn healthier restaurant eating habits.
• Be a role model. Actions speak louder than words.  If your children see you ordering healthy foods and not overeating, they are likely to follow suit without you even whispering a word. 
• Don’t use those kid’s menus at sit down restaurants. That is unless they’ll help your children eat smaller portions or healthier foods and/or fit in some healthier fruits and vegetables. 
• Do use kid’s menus in fast food restaurant. The smaller portions and healthier food choices can help.  
• Widen the scope of foods kids enjoy rather than narrowing their list to what adults believe are kids’ foods. Take them to ethnic restaurants – the common Mexican, Chinese and Italian; and less common Thai, Middle Eastern or Indian. Expose them to foods and people from around the globe. 

Learn more about teaching the kids in your life about healthy eating read my blog: Restaurant Meals with Kids: Treat them to Healthy Teachable Moments. 

For even more tips and tactics for the gamut of types of restaurants get a copy of my book: Eat Out, Eat Well – The Guide to Eating Healthy in Any Restaurant. Consider downloading the companion app Eat Out Well – Restaurant Nutrition Finder.

I'm often asked this question when I’m interviewed by the media. One might jump to the conclusion that several Asian cuisines, such as Chinese, Japanese or Thai are the healthiest cuisines, whereas Mexican, Middle Eastern and Italian are less healthy. When you look at the spectrum of foods served in all of these restaurants, this conclusion isn’t true. There are healthier and not-so-healthy choices in all types of restaurants that serve ethnic fare. 

What is true is that YOU can CHOOSE to eat any ethnic fare healthfully. Yes, those words YOU and CHOOSE are critically important. It’s all about your menu choices and how much you eat. Word to the wise – order less to eat less! In fact, this is easier to practice in many ethnic restaurants because splitting and sharing is more the norm. 

The two key strategies to put into action in any restaurants are: 

• control the amount of fat you eat
• limit your portions

To gather some skills and strategies for healthier eating in ethnic restaurants, read the answer to "What are the leading skills and strategies to healthy restaurant eating?". 

To learn more about all aspects of healthy restaurant eating get a copy of my book: Eat Out, Eat Well – The Guide to Eating Healthy in Any Restaurant. Consider downloading the free companion app Eat Out Well – Restaurant Nutrition Finder to your mobile device.

Controlling portions is the most important strategy to controlling the amount of food you eat. Eating less food also helps you eat less fat and sodium. Don’t wait to control portions until a plate of food is in front of you. Start from the moment you glimpse at the menu board or have a menu placed in your hands. 

Research shows the more food you get placed in front of you the more you will likely eat. No surprise there! 

Check out these portion control strategies. Start applying one, two or more of them as soon as you eat your next restaurant meal. Figure out which portion control strategies work best for you in various restaurant eating situations. Some might work better when you eat by yourself and others when you have two or more dining companions. Several might work better in ethnic restaurants and others in fast food or upscale restaurants. 

Test out these strategies and change your restaurant eating habits over time. 

Try out these portion control strategies:

• Watch for the words that mean smaller portions: small, regular, junior, petite vs. large portions: jumbo, supreme, grande, giant, BIG.
• Practice portion control from the get-go. Take care to order small portions or split and share menu items so you don't get more food in front of you than you should be eating...most of the time you can eat more than you should.
• Split items. Often ordering one dish is enough for two. Example: order one personal pizza and share a salad. Splitting works well for desserts too. Sometimes you need more spoons or forks.
• Share. Order items that complement each other and help you eat more balanced meals. Example: in an Italian restaurant, one person order pasta the other a veal or chicken entrée. Then split them down the middle.
• Choose from salads, appetizers, soups and/or a la carte menu items. Request that one, such as a salad, be served as an appetizer (if your dining partners are eating appetizers) and another, such as soup or an appetizer, is served as a main course.
• Don't forget those take home containers aka "doggie bags" for leftovers. You can order a take home container when you order your meal. Put away your leftovers before you dig in. Leftovers are the amount of food you don’t think you should eat at the time. 

Gather specific portion control tips for fast food restaurants and ethnic restaurants. 

To learn more about all aspects of healthy restaurant eating get a copy of my book: Eat Out, Eat Well – The Guide to Eating Healthy in Any Restaurant. Consider downloading the companion app Eat Out Well – Restaurant Nutrition Finder.

Think about it. Though our focus when we order restaurant meals is squarely on what foods we’ll eat, we nearly always order a beverage. That’s true whether it’s a fast food meal or you’re going upscale. Your meal may include just a non-alcoholic beverage or may also include an alcoholic beverage. In fact, “what can I bring you to drink?” is often the first question you’re asked in a sit down restaurant. 

Your choice or choices of beverages deserve as much knowledge and thought as your food options. That’s because beverages can dramatically escalate the calories you consume in a meal…or not. 

A few thoughts and tips about Non-alcoholic Beverages: 

From the walk up and order fast food burger and French fries chains to coffee, bagel and sandwich shops, to walk up and order ethnic restaurants, the thirst quenching options have exploded and sizes have grown. Healthier and less than healthy beverages abound. Water, from tap to bottled, is no longer hard to find. It’s usually your healthiest bet. You can usually ask for a slice of lemon to flavor water at no extra cost.

You’ll find regularly sweetened and diet soda (carbonated soft drinks) either from the fountain or in bottles. If restaurants stock bottled or canned beverages, they usually have an array from water, to fruit juice or drinks, sports drinks, teas and coffees, and soda. All sugar sweetened beverages, can pack in a load of calories and an unhealthy source carbohydrates (essentially added sugars). Today coffee and tea drinks, including calorie laden ones are plentiful too.        

Making healthy non-alcoholic beverage choices can help you control your calories, carbohydrate and fat grams…and keep more change in your pocket. 

The easiest way to limit those added sugars and calories is to drink fewer and smaller portions of sugar-sweetened beverages, or none at all. And for people with diabetes monitoring grams of carbohydrate, you generally don’t have enough grams to spare on beverages with added sugars.  

Generally speaking I recommend you chew your calories, don’t sip them. Yes, there’s still debate about whether people consume more calories more easily if they’re sipped or slurped rather than chewed. But it stands to reason that chewing rather than sipping your calories will be more satisfying. 

A few thoughts and tips about Alcoholic Beverages:

Research shows that light to moderate alcohol consumption over time can increase insulin sensitivity and decrease insulin resistance. This impact is at the center of alcohol’s beneficial effects on decreasing the risk of metabolic syndrome, prediabetes and type 2 diabetes and conveying other heart-related benefits. It may minimally raise the good HDL-cholesterol, too. Nice list of health benefits! 

Keep in mind these are beneficial effects of moderate alcohol. And that’s any type of alcohol, not just red wine. Excess alcohol intake causes health problems a plenty. 

How much alcohol is moderate?  

The recommendation for alcohol for the general public, from the Dietary Guidelines and for people with diabetes, from American Diabetes Association, is the same. No more than a “moderate” amount of alcohol in a single day. Moderate is defined as one drink, or serving of alcohol (defined below) for women and two drinks a day for men. This moderate amount is an amount to consume in a single day and not averaged for a few days at a time. 

Pitfalls of alcoholic beverages:  

Calories: Alcohol contains calories with next to no nutrition to speak of. Calories from alcohol can add up quickly. A couple of 12 ounce regular beers contain 300 calories. 

Safety: Alcohol is enjoyable to many people due to its fairly rapid effect on the brain which makes you more likely to order and drink more alcohol. Alcohol also makes people more relaxed and social. This is one reason it’s more common to drink alcohol when dining out and lingering over a meal or celebrating an occasion. 

Develop an alcoholic beverage drinking plan. Think about when you’d like to be able to fit in and enjoy a serving or two of alcohol. Ask yourself these questions: 

• when do you want to fit an alcoholic beverage in? 
• where do you want to consume it? 
• what do you want to drink? 
• how will you fit it into your eating and diabetes control plan based on your priorities? 

Get many other tips and tactics for how to manage both non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverage in my book Eat Out, Eat Well – The Guide to Eating Healthy in Any Restaurant. Consider downloading the companion app Eat Out Well – Restaurant Nutrition Finder.

A lot of information is available and more is coming. That wasn’t the case before the days of the Internet. Today most restaurants have a website. Most chain restaurants of any size provide nutrition information for the majority of their menu items. That’s particularly true for walk up and order restaurants. It’s not the case for single location restaurants – both fine dining and ethnic restaurants. 

Beyond the information available from restaurants there’s access to a number of food and nutrition databases which provide information for many restaurant foods. There are apps filled with food and nutrition information as well. 

Speaking of apps, my book Eat Out, Eat Well – The Guide to Eating Healthy in Any Restaurant which contains more information about restaurant nutrition labeling regulations and some nutrition data for restaurant foods has a companion app with loads of data Eat Out Well – Restaurant Nutrition Finder. This app, based on GPS technology, contains the nutrition information for thousands of restaurant foods. It’s constantly updated with the latest information. It’s free so consider downloading it  to your mobil device. 

More nutrition information will be available over the years. As of late 2015 and due to an amendment in the  Affordable Care Act restaurants serving the same menu with 20 or more outlets to will be required to display calories on menus or menu boards. Other data, from fat, sodium and more, must be made available to customers upon request. The restaurant must have the ability to provide you with the information at the restaurant. 

To eat healthy restaurant meals it helps to learn and master skills and strategies that help you deal with the challenges of healthy restaurant eating.

The skills and strategies you’ll need fall into five categories. Read through them all. Think about which ones resonate with you and which ones you think will work well for you in different restaurant eating situations. They range from psychologically-focused to the more practical. 

Learn many other skills and strategies in my book Eat Out, Eat Well – The Guide to Eating Healthy in Any Restaurant.

1. Develop a healthy mindset and a can-do attitude: This is your critical and crucial first step. Until you shift your mindset, you’ll have a difficult time putting other skills and strategies into action. Yes, it’s a psychological shift in your thinking. Mastering this will make using the other skills and strategies doable.
   
   Ask yourself what changes you need to make to find a balance between continuing to enjoy restaurant eating while you order and eat healthier foods. Be kind to yourself. These changes will take some time and a repertoire of positive experiences. You can do this!
2. Set your game plan in gear prior to your arrival: If you’re familiar with the menu offerings from a particular restaurant you frequent, take a minute on your walk or drive to the restaurant to think through what you might order before you cross the restaurant’s threshold. If you know the menu well and are set on your order, don’t even tempt your taste buds by looking at it. Be the first in your party to order. If you want to split and/or share menu items, ask who’s willing as people peruse the menu. 
3. Be an avid fat detective: Dodging the fats in restaurants is one of your biggest challenges. Fat adds significant calories without adding any food volume (or “bites”). Fat is the most saturated form of calories, with 9 calories per gram. Carbohydrate and protein contain half the calories, at 4 calories per gram. Therefore, lowering fat intake, even just a little can make a big impact on the number of calories you consume. 
4. Practice portion control from the start: Large portions are a reality of restaurant meals. To cut portions down to a healthy size you’ll need to “outsmart” the menu and be creative with what you order. A successful strategy is to control portions from the start – when you place your order. The result? Less food will be in front of you and you’ll eat less. This is the “out of sight, out of mind (or mouth)” technique. It’s a lot more difficult to control the amount you eat if food is just a fork or spoon full away. To learn a few more helpful portion control strategies read "What strategies can help you control the HUGE portions of restaurant foods?".
5. Get comfortable making those special requests. Special requests are a key to being served foods as you like (or need) them. A special request might mean asking for an ingredient to be left off, such as cheese, bacon, and/or sour cream. Or asking for a substitution: baked potato rather than French fries or potato chips; or to spread mustard rather than mayonnaise on a sandwich. Maybe you just want an ingredient, like salad dressing, butter, or guacamole, served on the side so you control the amount you eat. Special requests might make you feel like you’re ruffling feathers or holding up other customers in line. However, there are ways to approach special requests that will put you at ease and won’t make you or your eating partners sink into their seats.  

Learn many other skills and strategies in my book: Eat Out, Eat Well – The Guide to Eating Healthy in Any Restaurant. Consider downloading the companion app Eat Out Well – Restaurant Nutrition Finder to your mobile device.

Healthy eating is a challenge in general. Eating healthy restaurant meals is particularly challenging yet life today creates  many situations  when you need or want to eat restaurant meals. Due to the accessibility and availability of restaurants today we’re eating more meals away from home than ever before. Learn the challenges, then make healthier choices.  

To understand the challenges of restaurant eating it’s important to get a handle on the major pitfalls.  These are the five leading challenges of healthy restaurant eating. Learn more about these and the other pitfalls in my book Eat Out, Eat Well – The Guide to Eating Healthy in Any Restaurant . 

The five leading challenges of healthy restaurant eating:  

1. Treating restaurant meals as special occasions: Back a few decades ago restaurant meals were special occasions - unique events in a person’s, couple or family’s lives which took place once in a blue moon. Today people eat restaurants meals an average of five times a week. Restaurant meals run the gamut from a sub sandwich on-the-run to get the job of eating done, to celebrating special occasions – yes we still do this. 
2. Healthier foods, fruits, vegetables, whole grains low fat dairy foods, are few and far between: The very foods you should eat more of for good health range from limited to simply missing in action from many restaurant meals.
1. Vegetables: You can find salads in fast food restaurants. Side salads and entrée salads are available in most sit-down American style restaurants. But you’ll have to work hard to meet that 2 1/2 cups of vegetables a day goal with restaurant food choices. 
2. Fruit: It’s next to nil in restaurants. To get the 2 ½ cups a day you need, plan to eat fruit as part of meals  at home or bring it with you to enjoy during the day.  
3. Whole grains: Things are looking up. Whole grains are making their way onto more sandwich shop and better restaurant menus. You’ll see whole wheat or grain breads and rolls available for sandwiches in sub and sandwich shops. You’re beginning to able to order pizza made with a whole grain crust or whole wheat pasta. 
4. Low fat dairy foods, such as milk or yogurt: Today, most fast food restaurants offer low fat milk, which is lower in fat and calories than whole milk, but not as low in fat as fat-free. Low fat milk is also available in most sit-down family style restaurants. Don’t count on milk in the majority of ethnic restaurants. 
3. Portions are HUGE: It seems that the “value equals volume” mentality invaded restaurant meals long ago. Portions and plates to hold these massive servings just get larger. When you’re forced to order and be served large portions it’s difficult to stop eating when there’s still food on your plate. 
4. Fats and oils are in, on, around and through: Fats and oils make foods taste good and stay moist for longer. That’s just the facts and a big reason why you see a wide variety of oils, fats and high fat ingredients used in restaurant foods from the start of the meal to the finishing touch. 
5. Sodium levels can skyrocket: Nutrition recommendations generally suggest most people cut their daily sodium count to no more than 2,300 milligrams per day. Observing the sodium counts of many restaurant meals can help you understand why people on average eat well over the recommended amount of sodium. Many restaurant meals can top 2,300 milligrams in one sitting. Salt in foods is not as much the sodium villain today as are processed and restaurant foods which contribute about three-quarters of the sodium we eat. 

To eat healthy restaurant meals you’ve got to learn and master skills and strategies. To help you deal with these challenges read, "What are the leading skills and strategies to eat healthy restaurant meals?". 

To learn more about all aspects of healthy restaurant eating get a copy of my book: Eat Out, Eat Well – The Guide to Eating Healthy in Any Restaurant. Consider downloading the companion app Eat Out Well – Restaurant Nutrition Finder to your mobile device.