OPTIONS FOR EATING OUT

EATING OUT HEALTHFULLY

by Lawrence Wilson, MD

Eating out has become the American way of life. One recent study showed that Americans today consume 42% of their calories away from home. Eating at restaurants can be a pleasure or a simple joy, but too often it is not a healthful way to eat.

WHERE TO EAT OUT

The following tips are generalizations, but may be very helpful for your health if you are eating out, regardless of how fancy or expensive the restaurant.

1. Walk into the kitchen of your favorite restaurants. Confirm the cleanliness and orderliness and have a look at the cleanliness of the employees.

2. Single-owner, non-chain restaurants often offer the best food for your money. Chain restaurants may be cleaner, but often serve poorer quality food at the same prices with more chemicals added.

They are also more likely to use pre-packaged or pre-prepared items. Fast food restaurants are notorious for serving chemical additives or even non-foods that only look like food to save money and/or time.

3. Indian (from India), Thai, Japanese and Chinese food restaurants are often best because they offer plenty of cooked vegetables and meats, with little or no wheat and other junk foods. they also often prepare food fresh.

4. Mexican food can be okay, but usually does not offer many vegetables. Instead, too many carbohydrates are often serves and cleanliness of the restaurant and the employees can be an issue.

Always ask for corn tortillas not flour tortillas in a Mexican restaurant. Flour tortillas are made of white flour and usually plenty of preservatives, too.

5. Skip pasta meals and past salads. This is wheat, an unhealthy food, with little protein and perhaps a few salad vegetables that are not well utilized.

6. A quiet, pleasant eating environment is essential for best digestion. Blaring television sets, crowds or noisy conditions may be fun, but do not lend themselves to healthful digestion. Eating outside is wonderful if the temperature is comfortable and the environment quiet and peaceful.

7. Fancy restaurants with higher prices may serve better food and be cleaner, but not necessarily.

8. Buffets at busy, quality restaurants are great because you can see what you will eat. However, ask when your items were cooked. If food has been sitting out for hours, it is more likely contaminated with bacteria or other mico-organisms.

WHAT TO ORDER IN RESTAURANTS

The Lowly Egg. Eggs are an incredibly excellent food, in or out of the home. Eggs are also the safest food to eat out, if you follow a few some simple rules:

1. Always order fresh eggs rather than quiche, for example, that may be old or made with processed eggs such as Egg Beaters, which are not good products.

2. Order eggs soft-boiled or poached, preferably. This does not overcook the egg. Next best is fried sunny side up or over easy. Hard-boiled eggs are much harder to digest. Unfortunately, this is what is found in egg salad sandwiches and chef’s salads, neither of which are healthful.

3. Beware of scrambled eggs because fast food places can add chemicals to them without your knowing it. This can include colorants, extra fat, which is cheaper than eggs, or spices that are mainly MSG that may give you a headache. They may also use powdered eggs instead of real ones.

Meats. Meat, with its high sulfur content, high zinc level and many other nutrients, is an important food in a polluted world. Not all meat is good, but good meat is often an excellent food to eat out. Here are tips, however, about ordering meats and poultry.

Turkey is rarely fresh, so avoid most turkey sandwiches and turkey salad or other turkey dishes unless it is a fresh turkey. Most comes off a turkey roll that has added chemicals, glues and more. Ground turkey is much better, although all ground turkey I have seen at the markets has added “natural flavors” that can include MSG and many other chemical ingredients that don’t agree with me too well.

Chicken is better. Especially good is a half-chicken, chicken thighs or legs or even chicken wings.

Beware of “chicken breast”. Often it is a glued together thing that just looks like chicken. Also, do not order chicken nuggets for the same reason.

Lamb is often fresh and a good meal to order at most restaurants.

Beef is often fresh or frozen, and a steak or hamburger is often safe at a restaurant if cooked well enough. However, do not eat beef too often as it is a hybridized food. Also, natural beef, lamb and chicken are better, but rarely available inrestaurants.

Fish at restaurants are a game of roulette and best avoided unless the place specializes in fresh fish. Most fish is very contaminated anyway. If you order fish, only order small fish to avoid mercury problems and make sure it is cooked enough to kill parasites in many fish. Strictly avoid all shellfish such as shrimp, oysters and others, unfortunately, as they are much too high in toxic metals.

Vegetables. Steamed, stir-fried or baked vegetabes are excellent to order in a restaurant. Before ordering, ask if vegetables are fresh. Vegetables also need to be washed carefully as they can carry parasites, especially when grown out of the country, as is often the case.

I would not order salad in any restaurant unless you know the place very well. Most restaurants do not wash it well enough. I would also avoid other raw foods for the same reason unless you know the restaurant washes and prepares the food very well.

More and more restaurants are turning to bagged salad items to save preparation time. This is probably a good trend, as these usually well-washed by machine that reduces human contact and therefore the possibility of transmitting disease.

However, at salad bars, many chemicals can be sprayed on vegetables, especially salads, to make it crispy, more green or red, or shiny. I would strictly avoid salad bars. I don’t recommend much raw food anyway.

Salad dressings and sauces. Dressings and sauces at restaurants are often the cause of food poisoning. Reasons for this are 1) they may be old, 2) they may be left out of the refrigerator too long, and 3) many are concoctions of chemicals and sugar that can ferment and support germs. Ask for oil and vinegar or a squeeze of lemon, perhaps, although this is very yin.

Fruit. I don’t’ recommend much fruit ever. However, a well-washed apple or peach is a fairly healthful item to consider for dessert if you must have fruit. Fruit salad is much less healthful as it is handled more. It may also be sweetened and may be old or from a can. Cooked fruit is also possible and better than fresh in some ways.

Drinking water. If you are health-conscious, avoid tap water. Bring your own spring or distilled water to the restaurant if they allow it. Otherwise, you can order spring water at many restaurants. It is worth the cost compared to the tap water.

Tea. Tea is almost universally made with tap water, so you are getting flavored tap water, not the most healthful product. Tea made with filtered water may be better, but who knows when the filter was changed. A dirty filter is worse than none.

Tea is generally safe from bacteria because it is boiled, which also helps reduce the chlorine in the water. Bottled tea may be better, as this is often made with filtered water. However, most tea is rather junky and made with tap water and best avoided. This goes for coffee and soda pop as well. I realize this leaves little to drink in a restaurant. However, it is best not to drink with meals, anyway.

The best idea and one that I use is to drink a bottle of spring or distilled water of your own before you enter a restaurant. Then you will not be tempted to drink the tap water on the table.

HAZARDS OF EATING OUT

Here are important considerations when you choose to eat out, whether at a fancy restaurant or a local bar and grill.

1. Hidden chemicals. Restaurants in general, and chain restaurants, in particular, often add many food chemicals to their meals. Special sauces and flavorings often contain sweeteners, flavor enhancers and hundreds of other additives.

Some people do not realize how sensitive they are to chemicals such as sulfites, MSG, sugars, aspartame and many others. Your headache, upset stomach or aches and pains that are attributed to a flu or other cause may, in fact, be a reaction to a meal. More serious consequences can occur as well.

2. Unclean and spoiled food is dangerous. Eating out can cause illness in many ways. In many restaurants, food sits for several days in large refrigerators or worse, at room temperature for hours before being served. These items often harbor bacteria and other toxins. Food is often less fresh in restaurants because they buy more than is needed to avoid running out if they have a busy night. This means much is leftover, which increases the risk of spoilage.

For this reason, beware of specials. While not always the case, when a restaurant has extra food that must be used up by a special date, it often ends up in specials. These sell well because they seem special when they are really just leftovers, reworked in some way to make them special. You may even pay extra for the leftovers, with the joke on the customer.

3. Unclean employees. Many restaurant workers are low-skilled employees who are in varying states of health. Most need their jobs and do not stay home if they are feeling ill. They may inadvertently sneeze, wipe their hands on their sleeve or take other actions that contaminate food, in spite of the apparent cleanliness of the establishment. Also, angry or dissatisfied restaurant workers have been known to toss food on the floor and then serve it, or worse.

Many today who work in restaurants, especially in large cities such as Phoenix, may be illegal aliens who are recent arrivals and not familiar with our laws and the rules of cleanliness that we take for granted.

4. Substitution. In many restaurants, even expensive ones, you may not get what you actually ordered. Fish, for example, is a commonly substituted item. Pollack may be used when the menu offers more expensive cod or grouper.

In one study, four out of ten fish samples sent to a lab for identification revealed that a cheaper fish had been substituted at local restaurants. In the same study, the lab found that in 24 US cities consumers have less than a 50/50 chance of actually being served the fish they order.

Maryland crabs may be on the menu, but cheaper substitutes are used often for convenience and cost savings. This occurs up to 70% of the time with some rare and expensive seafood items, according to James Anderson, chairman of the Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at the University of Rhode Island.

An article I reviewed stated that one way to find out if something is fishy is to ask where the fish comes from. If the waitress is not sure, order something else. Another solution is to avoid fish and seafood for the reasons discussed below.

5. Hidden Calories. If you watch calories, as many people do, hidden fats and sugars lurk in many restaurant dishes and sauces. At home you can read labels and know what you are consuming, but not at restaurants.

This is not just a fast food issue. At Ruby Tuesdays, for example, the classic burger has a whopping 1,013 calories. This makes a McDonald’s Big Mac at 540 calories look downright dietetic by comparison.

6. Hidden Cameras. Your dining experience is often not as private or intimate as you may believe, as more and more restaurants are installing spy cameras. This goes for all types of eating establishments, from the 4-star dining rooms to the local grills.

The video cameras are used to help waiters and manager know when service is needed and to oversee the bars. Most often, however, they are there to help prevent employee theft, a growing problem that can also affect the restaurant customers’ wallets and purses.

This is not a problem if you don’t mind it. It is a hidden danger if you want privacy in your life, however. If you are discussing business or otherwise need a private environment, then beware of many restaurants today.

7. The High Cost. Eating out is almost always more expensive than eating at home. There is some economy of scale by buying and preparing for many people.

However, the cost of the food is always half or less of the cost of a typical restaurant meal, according to the president of the National Food Service Advisors. You are helping pay the restaurant’s overhead, payroll, advertising and restaurant profit. The restaurant industry is expected to bring in about $537 billion in 2007.

8. Credit Card Theft. According to some experts, restaurants are among the most likely places to have your credit card information stolen. This occurs because in restaurants you actually hand over your credit card to a stranger.

This is much riskier than if you retain the card and swipe it at the supermarket. It is even riskier than making a transaction on the phone or even online.

Your name, address, card number and security code can be easily copied down by any number of people while processing the transaction.

One way to avoid this problem, of course, is to pay with cash or a check. Another way is to go up to the desk and watch your card as they process the transaction. This is the only way I suggest using a credit card in a restaurant or anywhere that you must hand your card to an employee.

9. Identity Theft. This is far more serious and occurs for the same reason. Giving a credit card to a waiter and then turning your back just invites people to read the entire card and learn whatever information, signatures, and other that may be there.

References

1. Bockman, C., “Ten Things Your Restaurant Won’t Tell You”, Smart Money, April 2007, p. 100-102.

2. Jensen, B. and Andereson, M., Empty Harvest, Avery Books, New York, 1990.

3. Dr. Julian Whitaker’s Health & Healing Newsletter, Vol. 17, #4, April 2007, Healthy Directions, Potomac, MD, (800) 539-8219.

This article first appeared in the Arizona Netnews, April-May 2007.

Home * Hair Analysis * Saunas * Books * Articles
Detoxification Protocols * Courses * About Dr. Wilson