Mind Your Decisions

Food Fridays: Eating Well While on the Clock

I was going to post a recipe today, but I felt it would be lost on my readers who are too busy to cook.

I was thinking about my friend who is an investment banker in New York. He works about 60-80 hours a week. Most days, he is at the office, and he expenses his meals to the company account. When he does have free time, he understandably spends it with friends at a bar instead of by himself cooking at home.

In spite of eating out so much, and not exercising regularly, he manages to maintain his weight and be reasonably healthy. He tells me his secret is to be very picky about his food and portion sizes. It made me wonder if there was a systematic way to eating healthy while dining out.

While researching, I was excited when I came across a healthy restaurant finder (thanks to Mary Kearl who wrote about it).

The website allows you to find restaurants near you that meet certain nutrition guidelines. Three criteria need to be met:

1. Entrées (or full meals) must include at least one of the following:

• fruits and/or vegetables
• lean protein, i.e., skinless white meat poultry, fish/seafood (including salmon), tofu, etc., with no more than two red meat dishes per restaurant
• 100% whole grains

2. Menu items must meet the following three criteria:

• Entrées (or full meals):
  • 750 calories or less
  • 25 grams of fat or less
  • 8 grams of saturated fat or less
• Appetizers, side dishes and desserts:
  • 250 calories or less
  • 8 grams of fat or less
  • 3 grams of saturated fat or less

If a menu item exceeds only one of these criteria (fat, saturated fat, or calorie) by a small margin (i.e., 10%), that item may be included on the website.

Whenever possible, menu items that are lower in sodium and cholesterol are featured.

3. Deep fried items (i.e., egg rolls, chicken fingers, tostada shells, etc.) are excluded from the website, except for very small amounts of garnishes, such as wonton strips.

I was excited to give this thing a try. I punched in my zip code, and allowed all price ranges.

Surprisingly, the first two results were Domino’s Pizza and Burger King. I held my skepticism and saw what menu items they recommended.

At Domino’s, you can eat two slices of veggie pizza, with chicken if you prefer, or have a side salad.

At Burger King, you can eat a side salad, a veggie burger, a grilled chicken sandwich, or a special order Whopper Jr. Or you could eat applesauce.

It was impressive how much nutrition information the website had. I experimented with other locations and was amazed they had nutrition facts for upscale restaurants like Chaya Brasserie in San Francisco.

It made me think this would be a great resource if you were traveling.

But overall, I was a little disappointed. I like the detail the website provides, but it is only useful if you can stick within their parameters. What if you have to eat at a restaurant they do not list? Or if your friends do not want to be as healthy as you?

So to complement the healthy choices, I also would focus on making better choices by avoiding the worst things you can eat on the job. A bad meal or two can hurt your diet habits (just as a spending splurge can bust your budget).

On that note, I came across an amazing food list compiled by Men’s Health Magazine. It lists the 20 worst foods in America. I suggest you check it out. I’ll talk about some examples I found particularly interesting.

Often, these foods are seemingly healthy and turn out to be loaded with calories and fat, like this Turkey burger:

Ruby Tuesday Bella Turkey Burger
1,145 calories
71 g fat
56 g carbs

We chose this burger for more than its calorie payload: Its name implies that it’s healthy.

The Truly Healthy Choice: Skip burgers entirely (few at Ruby Tuesday come in under 1,000 calories). Instead, order a 9-ounce sirloin with a side of steamed vegetables.

Another surprise is the seemingly healthy fish tacos:

On the Border Dos XX Fish Tacos with Rice and Beans
2,100 calories
130 g fat
169 g carbs
4,750 mg sodium

Perhaps the most misleadingly named dish in America: A dozen crunchy tacos from Taco Bell will saddle you with fewer calories.

Lighten the Load: Ask for grilled fish, choose the corn tortillas instead of flour (they’re lower in calories and higher in fiber), and swap out the carbohydrate-loaded rice for grilled vegetables.

And here’s one of the most villainous foods, the Awesome Blossom:

Chili’s Awesome Blossom
2,710 calories
203 g fat
194 g carbs
6,360 mg sodium

Even if you split that four ways, you’re in trouble for calories, fat, and salt.

I really like this list since I know what to avoid. It’s not that I don’t enjoy some of these foods, but they are just not the best choices.

I would bet you can find tastier food for the same caloric and fat cost. Or alternately said, you can find healthier food that gives you the same taste satisfaction.

Given the hazards of eating out, I always kept some snacks like yogurt, granola, and fruits around my cubicle (for which I was constantly ridiculed). But even I regressed on good habits: I ate lots of pizza for the first ten days of 2007 when I was working late nights.

So I don’t really have all the answers. But perhaps you do, and you can help other young people who eat on the job.

What are your experiences with eating well (or failing to eat well) on the clock?