Better Choices At Fast Food Restaurants by Robert D. Franklin

A friend of mine joined up with some friends and stopped at a fast food restaurant the other day. He can't stand fast food places, but sometimes everybody else wants to go there, so you make the best of it and find something at least somewhat healthy.

If you're in a situation like that (forced to eat fast-food), here's some helpful hints to make sure you're not doing too much damage to your health.

Make sure you ALWAYS avoid soda and anything deep fried like french fries, hash browns, and anything breaded like chicken nuggets, chicken patties, or breaded fish sandwiches. These are all drowned in deadly trans fats from the industrial hydrogenated vegetable oils.

Studies have indicated that as little as 1 gram of artificial trans fat per day can have serious degenerative internal effects in your body such as inflammation, clogging and hardening of the arteries, heart disease, various forms of cancer...not to mention packing on the flabby ab. Just 1 gram!

Consider that a typical fast-food meal of a breaded chicken sandwich (or fish sandwich), along with an order of fries can contain as much as 10 grams of trans fat! Stack on a cookie or pie for dessert (usually made with deadly margarine or shortening), and now you're up to about 13 grams of trans fat with that entire meal.

If 1 gram a day is subtly killing your insides, imagine what 13 grams are doing...by only eating one meal! It's good to understand and realize that YOU are the only one looking out for your own health. So, choose wisely.

Like I was saying before, it's best to avoid any soda. They are just heavily processed high fructose corn syrup which will definitely end up as extra belly fat. That includes DIET SODA, too!

The best bet for your body is ALWAYS water or sometimes unsweetened iced tea. You get the added benefit of the antioxidants in the unsweetened iced tea (stay far from sweeteners).

At breakfast, the best choice is an egg, ham, and cheese on an english muffin (not a croissant, which is full of nasty trans fats!), or a fruit & nut salad.

At lunch or dinner, the best choices are a grilled chicken sandwich, the chili, a grilled chicken salad without croutons (again...croutons = more trans), or even just a plain cheeseburger. These are pretty much the best options you have at most fast food places.

The main idea here is that the nastiest stuff at these fast food joints are the sodas and fries, and any other deep fried items. If you stay completely away from those items, you're at least making better choices than 95% of most people.

Even in the movie "SuperSize Me", the main character stated that he almost never eats the fries or soda, even though he eats the burgers every day, and he's not necessarily overweight. There's no way I'm saying that fast-food burgers made with their refined white bread and low quality beef and cheese are the healthiest thing, but the point is: the real health damage is found in the fries and sodas.

So, friend, remember to choose SMART the next time you're out at one of these places. You'll do your body and your health a huge favor.