Eat Healthy while Dining Out

The principles for eating in the Dietary Guidelines are basically the same regardless of where the food is eaten. It's true you may have less control over how your foods are prepared and what ingredients are used when you eat out, but you can control which foods and the amount. Keep in mind that it's your total diet that counts and that the principles of variety, moderation, and balance work best when practiced regularly over a period of time. Occasional splurges can be worked into a long-range plan. Here's what we mean by variety, moderation and balance.

Variety

No one food supplies all of the protein, vitamins, and minerals you need for good health. That's why it's important to choose from a wide variety of foods. You also need to choose foods that provide adequate starch and fiber and supply enough (but not too many) calories to maintain desirable weight.

To help ensure such variety, choose foods daily from each of these major food groups:

You can easily offset the lack of variety in one meal with the food selections you make the rest of the day. For example, if your lunch is short on vegetables, add an extra vegetable or salad to your evening meal.

Moderation

The Dietary Guidelines suggest Moderation or "avoiding too much" fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sugars, sodium, and alcohol. The also emphasize the the importance of maintaining desirable weight by not eating too many calories. Moderation does not mean cutting out all foods that are high in calories, sugars, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, and alcohol. Moderation means choosing these foods less frequently and smaller portions.

Some experts suggest limiting the amount of fat we eat to one third of our calories or less. (In a 2,000 calorie diet, that's about 74 grams of fat a day.) For sodium, some experts consider 1,100 to 3,300 milligrams a day to be a safe and adequate level for adults. (This is the amount of sodium in about 1/2 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt. It includes includes the sodium present in foods as well as what's added during cooking and at the table.) Most of us eat more fat and sodium than these recommendations, and many of us overdo on sugars and calories, too.

Balance

Balance means getting the variety of foods needed for essential nutrients and the calories you need to maintain your desirable weight, without getting too much fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sugars, sodium and alcohol.

Back to Restaurant Bytes