We like to eat out and when making choices look for lower calorie, lower fat or healthier cooking preparations ie baked or grilled vs fried. I just received this article from an e-zine I subscribe to and thought you may find in interesting:
www.hungrygirl.com

"Shocking Restaurant Nutritionals... AHHHH!
... Eight Scripps-owned TV stations in different cities had reporters order a total of about twenty so-called "healthier" meal options at Applebee's, Macaroni Grill, Chili's, Cheesecake Factory, etc. The food was then sent to a lab to be tested, to see if the nutritional stats provided by the restaurants were accurate. The results were ASTOUNDING, to say the least. The worst offender of the bunch was one of the Pollo Magro "Skinny Chicken" samples from Macaroni Grill. It contained nowhere near the "less than 6g fat and 500 calories" the menu claims (let alone the 330 calories and 5g fat listed on the website's nutritional page) -- it actually had over 1,000 calories and just under 50 grams of fat. INSANE! (FYI, a "Skinny Chicken" sample t aken from another city actually had only 320 calories, but still contained 14g fat. So you never know!) All four items that were tested from the Chili’s Guiltless Grill menu contained more than twice the fat they should have had -- the Guiltless Chicken Platter actually had more than 30g fat, as opposed to the 9 grams claimed by Chili's! Many of the other offerings had about 100 more calories and 13 additional fat grams than they were supposed to...."

For full lab results on the items tested,
http://www.abc2news.com/content/themenutest/testresults/default.aspx

I like to eat out too (I dislike having to cook, wash dishes, etc... I'm domestically challenged ). I have found that most food (even within the same restaurant) varies by cook. I don't watch calories or avoid fat (I like butter), but my biggest thing is SUGAR. Basically, I opt for whole wheat bread (when possible) grilled or baked (when possible) and avoid sugar (when possible). Of course there are times when I either don't want to avoid the "bad" things or can't get food cooked like I want. That's why I go exercise 5 times a week (I go to Curves).

Hi Lorna,

You might be surprised to find out that not all doctors will tell you that butter is bad. I know of at least one who encourages you to use the real thing rather than the substitutes (some of which are really not fit for human consumption).

And yes, I would agree that sugar is best avoided, especially high fructose corn syrup. But I still have a weakness, especially for sweet tea...

Brian

My chiropractor says butter over most of the margarines. I don't like margarine. I have found that I tend to use 1/2 the butter than margarine. Also I avoid soy (food intolerance, makes me sick... and it doesn't take long for me to figure out if something had soy in it) and canola/rapeseed (if it makes cows crazy then it can't be all that good for humans). And I like my tea sweet too... thanks to Splenda (Aspartame makes me crazy... literally).

DH's cardiologist says anything spreadable in a tub over the hard kind. He also wants strict adherance to his cardiac diet. . . "If it tastes good, spit it out."

Restaurant menus leave so much out. They might give you a little bit of what's in a food, but what they leave out is usually monumental. I figure all restaurants use mostly pre-packaged prepared foods and you cannot get any worse than that. Even shopping at the store. . . if you look at frozen foods, you really have to look closely to get something that doesn't have a lot of salt in it. DH cannot have all that salt.

We eat out more when we are with friends, but by ourselves, we tend to eat in the rig.

Dale

When I bake (rarely) I use butter because my recipes don't come out the same using margarine. My DH just had a check up and needs to pay more attention to the spreads he uses now. I Googled "butter vs margarine" and found this article from the Mayo Clinic: Butter vs Margarine
We have started using Smart Balance Brand Light Buttery Spread for toast it is made with flax oil and is non-hydrogenated. Also like their Natural Peanut Butter it has no refined sugar, or hydrogenated oil and contains Omega 3's. For mayonnaise dressing they just came out with one that has 1/2 the fat and calories of regular. We found all at Wal-Mart.

When a friend had to go on a salt restricted diet a while a go, her journey was most eye opening as to the salt content in canned foods.
Examples of Sodium Levels in Common Foods

You never have to use a salt shaker and you can easily exceed your daily sodium requirement.
According to the American Heart Association a healthy adult should eat less than 2,300 milligrams (approx 1 tsp) of sodium a day.

Ok, I resisted this for a while, but I have to speak up. You can call me a nut case if you want to, but here goes...

It's a myth that hypertension is salt-induced. At worst it appears that maybe only 10 percent of the population is susceptible to developing high blood pressure due to excess salt intake - but even that figure is questionable. One recent study found that sodium intake was inversely related to cardiovascular mortality. In other words, those individuals who ate less salt were more likely to die from cardiovascular causes. (Am J Med 06;119(3):275)

(If sodium is an issue, one might consider exploring the health of the adrenal glands and have a look at iodine levels. Those are two things that are somewhat related that are often totally ignored.)

As for the butter myth, butter is not nearly so bad as people have been drilled to believe. First, it was, "Butter is bad, use heart-healthy hydrogenated corn oil margarines". (Haven't seen that one lately, have you?!)

Now, they're saying that hydrogenation is bad. It's been linked with heart disease and other problems. No argument there.

But, what have they replaced the hydrogenated vegetable oils with? The big thing now is interesterified fats. And just like hydrogenation, the process of esterification produces molecules that are not normally found in nature.

Wanna know what kinds of problems people have with interesterified fat diets? Negative impacts on HDL cholesterol, impaired glucose metabolism & utilization, and increased risk of diabetes, to name a few. But they don't tell you that on the packages. They've swapped one set of problems for another. (Have you noticed that about every third commercial these days seems to have something to do with a glucose meter or blood sugar testing supplies???)

And since we're talking about vegetable oils, I thought you might find this interesting. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a huge push to switch from such saturated fats as butter, lard, coconut oil, and palm oil to vegetable oils. At that time, macular degeneration wasn't a problem. Many opthalmology textbooks published before the 1980s barely mentioned it. Since that time, practically every baby boomer born in western society has been consuming vegetable oil-laced foods from infancy. (The mantra of the general public is, "I don't care what's in them, just don't mess with my French fries.")

Vegetable oils are not so safe and heart-healthy as they are touted to be. Dr. Paul Beaumont, of Australia, discovered that individuals who consumed vegetable oil (corn, soybean, sunflower, etc.), had twice the risk of macular degeneration as those who didn't. And for those who already had the disease, consuming vegetable oil products saw the disease progress at 3.8 times the rate of those eating little or no vegetable oil.

Throw out vegetable oil. Avoid margarine like the plague. Switch to butter and olive, macadamia and coconut oils.

And in case anyone wonders where I got such wild ideas, they came straight from a medical doctor that I highly respect! Do I expect any of you would change what you're doing? No. But I hope you'll realize that there's more than one medical opinion of the general health ideas out there today. And following the money trail can lead to a whole raft of discoveries that might shock and amaze. But enough said by me.

FWIW...

Brian

Brian...I don't think you are a nut-case at all. Your comments reflect the problem of an individual using diet recommendations produced by averages resulting from various studies.

I think generally most of the health organizations that make recommendations provide useful guidelines but, clearly, an individual needs to make decisions on their particular diet needs to avoid problems related to obesity, environment, genetics, etc.

I am a salt freak and put it on most all foods. Always have. Has no measurable effect based on health tests. However, if someone else used the amount I use they may die an early death from hypertension or other related problems.