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  Healthier choices are not always easy to find at restaurants. At places I eat at often, I’m not shy about making special requests and substitutions. This sometimes means ordering salads without croutons, leaving the rice out of my burrito, or asking for vegetables instead of potatoes. They don’t all work at every spot, and I don’t make the change if I feel it will severely and negatively impact my enjoyment of the dish. But if I’m just as happy with oil and vinegar on my salad as I am with the honey-glazed syrup that is normally used, then I don’t hesitate to ask for it. At the very least I try to make sure there is something green on my plate every time I eat. Adding colorful vegetables brightens any meal, and people often look at my plate with envy when we’ve ordered the same thing, but mine shows up with a vibrant salad instead of a pile of soggy fries.

  Remember too that choosing salad doesn’t always mean you have to skip the fries completely. When I eat with friends, there is almost always someone else who would prefer to eat healthier, but would also love to try a few fries. See if anyone wants to go splitsies with you on the dishes (e.g., I’ll get the lasagna and you get the spinach salad), or go in on an extra order of fries “for the table.” That way you get to try them, but don’t eat the entire basket, and you still get your share of greens. Everyone’s a winner.

  Keep a mental (or physical, if you’re still journaling) record of how often you splurge and how it affects you. I find that one or two delicious-but-coulda-been-healthier meals can fit into my weekly healthstyle budget fairly easily, but many more than that can make my pants start to feel tighter. When you count your indulgences, it forces you to question whether you’re making the right decision in the moment and to ask yourself if this particular meal is worth sacrificing for a better option later in the week. This mindfulness alone is often powerful enough to keep you on the right track.

  10 Simple Substitutions for Making Restaurant Foods Healthier

  When nothing on the menu perfectly fits my preferences, I don’t hesitate to swap out whatever I don’t want for something better. Whether it’s to avoid processed foods or simply add vibrance and color to your plate, here are ten simple swaps to make the most of your restaurant meals.

  1. Mixed greens instead of iceberg or romaine lettuce

  I enjoy Cobb salads, but for some reason they’re usually made using old iceberg lettuce. Most places these days carry mixed greens or spinach as well and are usually happy to make the switch.

  2. Fruit instead of toast

  I’m not sure why breakfast spots think you need two giant pieces of toast on top of your potatoes, eggs, and pancakes, but if you don’t want toast, they’ll often offer you fruit instead. This is one of the best upgrades you can get away with.

  3. Salad instead of potatoes

  Speaking of potatoes, although they are real food and have their place in a healthy diet, they’re so often fried in rancid industrial oils that it’s best to skip them. Swapping them out for salad or cooked greens is rarely a problem.

  4. Avocado instead of mayo

  Real mayonnaise, the kind made from egg yolks and olive oil, is perfectly healthy (and delicious). Unfortunately, that isn’t what most places are putting on your sandwich. Instead, commercial mayos are typically made with soybean or canola oil (i.e., overprocessed industrial oil). It may cost a little extra, but avocado is a fantastic alternative to gooey up your lunch.

  5. Cheese plate instead of dessert

  One of the things I love about France is that it’s perfectly acceptable to have cheese after dinner instead of sugar. If everyone is ordering crème brûlée and you don’t want to be a party pooper, get the cheese plate instead. Good cheese is healthy.

  6. Brown rice instead of white

  I don’t mind white rice in small quantities, but if I’m stuck eating somewhere where I know the food isn’t very healthy, I’ll swap out my white rice for brown (and order as many vegetables as possible) if the option is available.

  7. Wine instead of cocktails

  Dinner often starts with a drink selection. Although wine certainly has calories, cocktails usually have hundreds more thanks to the liqueurs and syrups typically used. Mixed drinks have their place, but if you’ll also be eating an extra few hundred calories, then wine is a better choice.

  8. Beans instead of rice

  If I see beans or lentils anywhere on the menu, I’ll often ask if the kitchen can use them instead of one of the faster-digesting starches on my plate. Your waiter may be confused, but he or she will usually do it if you ask.

  9. Olive oil and vinegar instead of sugary dressing

  At some point in the past twenty years salad dressings started being made with ridiculous amounts of sugar and salt, probably to cover up the completely flavorless vegetables from the industrial food chain. Good old-fashioned olive oil and vinegar make a better choice, and most kitchens have them.

  10. Anything instead of American cheese

  Have you ever looked at the ingredients in American cheese? Besides water, the first ingredient is usually trans fat. The second is cornstarch. All the way at the bottom it says, “Contains: Milk.” Replacing it with real cheddar, gruyère, provolone, or even nothing would be healthier.

  LOCKED IN CHAINS

  Things start to get ugly when the restaurant selection is no longer up to you. Every now and then, often while visiting family or traveling for work, I find myself in a restaurant, chosen by others, that is just straight-up bad. You know the place: the ingredients are crappy and the portions huge, and sometimes you can smell the industrial oil burning in the back. There’s a good chance it is also a chain restaurant. At times like these I go into survival mode.

  Although I’m a firm believer that life should be awesome, sometimes it isn’t, and we have to make do with what we have. There’s no point in complaining and having everyone call you a snob.* Just smile politely, search the menu for the healthiest thing you can find, substitute to your heart’s content, eat slowly and mindfully, eat only as much as you need to keep you from starving, and call it a day. The important thing to remember at places like this is that none of the food is going to be good, so you might as well suffer through a flaccid salad or chalky grilled fish and vegetables rather than waste a perfectly good indulgence on something that isn’t worth the calories. You can make it up to yourself later.

  MENU-SPEAK

  Deciphering what is healthy on a menu is not always straightforward. Restaurants have made an art of luring you in with their words and making dishes sound absolutely irresistible, regardless of how they actually taste. Another problem is that dishes that should be healthy, for instance, a Thai chicken salad, are often loaded with secret ingredients (usually extra sugar, salt, and processed oils) that actually cause them to clock in at way over the number of calories you’d expect (according to the nutrition facts, the Thai chicken salad at California Pizza Kitchen has 1,160 calories). To avoid these traps you need to first learn to decipher menu-speak and then tailor your ordering and special requests to remove the worst offenders.

  You already know to avoid foods that are obviously very processed, focus on whole foods, and make sure there is something green on your plate. Once you’ve gotten that far, the biggest issues are usually sauces and toppings. Sugar, oil, and salt make foods taste better, and when restaurants use low-quality (i.e., bad-tasting) ingredients, they aren’t shy about compensating for this by using as many sweet or creamy sauces as possible. Think of these ingredients—the flavor trifecta of sugar, fat, and salt—as makeup for your food. A small amount of the good stuff (e.g., butter or cheese), used tastefully and with restraint, can enhance and beautify a dish. But too much of it is a sign that people are covering up something they don’t want you to see.

  20 Code Words to Look for on Restaurant Menus

  Words to Avoid Words to Order

  glazed roasted

  crispy baked

  melted broiled

  smothered rubbed

  breaded seared

&n
bsp; creamy grilled

  honey-dipped steamed

  crusted sautéed

  gooey spiced

  cheesy seasoned

  How do you know if a restaurant is trying to mask its food with shameless flavor enhancers? Several code words and descriptions can tip you off to this sort of culinary cover-up. Sugar, for example, tends to be sticky, so words like “glaze” and even “sticky” itself are a good sign there is extra sweetener around. Similarly, anything that’s “crispy” or “crusted” has likely been covered in a batter made from processed wheat or corn and soaked in oil at high temperatures. Fortunately, there are also words that signify more healthily prepared dishes. “Roasted,” “grilled,” or “spiced” foods have extra flavor without extra calories.

  Sometimes it’s hard to find something on a menu that isn’t smothered in sugar or dredged in bread crumbs. At this point try to simply find the dish that sounds the best and ask your server to leave off the crispy wontons and bring you a side of spinach instead. Once you know what to look for, making the right call will start to come naturally.

  VALUE MEAL

  Ultimately, the key to navigating restaurants is deciding where the real value lies. When you know a restaurant isn’t particularly special, there’s no reason to order the most indulgent thing on the menu. Experiment and figure out what makes healthier food taste better to you (extra avocado?) and choose those options if the circumstances don’t warrant a splurge. Even when food is exceptional, remember that you don’t need to eat all of it to feel satisfied. Count your indulgences and save them for when they are truly worth it.

  THIRTEEN

  HOW TO WIN OVER FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE FAMILY

  “Families are like fudge: mostly sweet with a few nuts.”

  —ANONYMOUS

  “As a child my family’s menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it.”

  —BUDDY HACKETT, AMERICAN COMEDIAN

  “Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery.”

  —MARK AMIDON

  Getting over your own issues with food is one thing, but getting friends and family to support (and hopefully join) you is another story entirely. Everyone knows we should be eating healthier, working out more, and generally making better life decisions. The problem is, once you actually start doing those things, nobody wants to hear about it.

  As ridiculous as it sounds, people don’t like to know when other people are taking the initiative to do things they know they should be doing themselves but haven’t had the discipline to start. If you aren’t careful about it, your best efforts can earn you enemies or, worse, lose you friends. No one likes to be reminded of their own failings, and some folks will inevitably view your virtuous behavior as a judgment against their own. This is unfortunate, but it is also normal.

  Eating like a foodist does not doom you to being ostracized from your friends and family, however. This chapter will teach you how to lightheartedly deflect your critics, winning them over with charm and tasty, tasty food. We’ll also discuss how to gently nudge (but not annoy) those loved ones you hope will adopt some better eating habits for their own sake. This is tricky business for sure, but with an open heart and delicious food, anything is possible.

  WORDS WITH FRIENDS

  Step one in dealing with the social aspects of eating like a foodist is understanding that criticism almost always stems from a lack of information, personal insecurities, or a combination of both, especially in the realms of food and health. This means that you shouldn’t immediately interpret any questioning of your eating habits as a personal attack. Instead, think of them as an invitation to explain your actions and motivations in a friendly, nonthreatening way. Rather than getting defensive or shrinking away in shame, be prepared with a handful of agreeable responses that describe your reasoning, but also make it clear that your actions are in no way a judgment on anyone else’s behavior.

  The most important tool you have for striking this balance is the language you use to describe your food and habits. In psychology this is known as the framing effect. Framing is powerful, because people can have drastically different reactions to exactly the same behavior depending on how they look at it. For instance, if you frame your decision to bring in a salad for lunch as a personal experiment to see if it makes you feel better, your coworkers will be much more sympathetic than if you bring in a salad and self-righteously explain that eating pizza every day isn’t healthy. People can relate to wanting to solve personal health issues, but generic statements about what is and isn’t right to eat gives the impression that you believe everyone who eats pizza is making a bad life choice. If people believe they are being judged, their natural reaction is to judge you right back. And clearly, you’re a jerk.

  Whenever possible, avoid framing your choices in a way that implies a value judgment. Steer clear of explanations that emphasize restriction, sacrifice, or self-discipline, since these all imply a negative evaluation of the opposite behavior. Instead, frame your actions in a positive light by highlighting pleasure, enjoyment, and well-being as the motivation behind your actions. You control how you frame your food choices, and the words you use can have a profound impact on how your friends, family, and coworkers respond to them.

  The framing effect also works for specific foods. When you frame a food in a positive light by using words that highlight its most delicious attributes rather than its virtuous ones, it can alter the attractiveness of the food as well as how the food is perceived while eaten. This is because taste is subjective, and people actually rate food as tasting better or worse depending on how it is described and presented. Moreover, food that is described as “tasty” is rated as being more satisfying and filling than the same food described as “healthy.” The implications of this are huge.

  In his book Marketing Nutrition, Brian Wansink (the same man who helped us eat less using the mindless margin in his other book, Mindless Eating) explores the impact of describing foods in both a positive and negative light. In one experiment, Wansink and his colleagues altered the names of six menu items at a cafeteria at the University of Illinois and observed how well they sold. They also conducted a survey asking patrons to rate the attractiveness, tastiness, and satisfaction (approximate number of calories) of each item. In the control conditions the items had names like “red beans and rice” and “grilled chicken,” whereas in the experimental conditions the items were renamed “Traditional Cajun red beans with rice” and “Tender grilled chicken.” The descriptive titles increased sales by 27 percent, and the diners rated these items as more appealing, tastier, and higher in calories (remember they were exactly the same foods).1 According to Wansink, “Descriptive labels influenced nearly every aspect of the eating experience.”2

  You can make healthy food sound (and therefore taste) more delicious by describing it using words that evoke a geographical location, tradition, nostalgia, or vivid sensory images. This should be easy for a foodist, since real food is innately rich in these attributes. Real food is “farm fresh,” “seasonal,” “ripe,” “hand-picked,” “crisp,” “succulent,” and “juicy,” and you can use all these words to your advantage. Similarly, if you’ve taken care to prepare an ingredient in a special way, you can use language that emphasizes your cooking method. Did you make those ravioli by hand or slow roast that pork shoulder? Play it up. Remember that you aren’t just serving delicious healthy food—you have to sell it. If you’re excited about something you found at the farmers market, explain why. Tell stories about where the food comes from or the interesting new recipe you found.

  How to Eat Healthy Without Being a Buzzkill

  Over the past several years I’ve used a handful of different tactics to deflect the worst intentions of naysayers. Here are the ones I’ve found work best.

  1. Don’t get defensive

  The worst thing you can do when someone criticizes you for ordering a salad is to get defensive and start preaching your nutritional superiorit
y. I’ve seen this done, and it doesn’t end well. Whatever you do, keep an upbeat tone and maintain perspective. Not everyone understands the importance of their daily food decisions, and it’s not your job to educate them.

  INSTEAD OF: “At least I’m not going to have diabetes by the time I’m forty!”

  TRY: “Actually the salad here is tasty as hell. Have you tried it?”

  2. Use humor

  Without getting defensive, you can still jab back a bit, so long as it is clear you’re being playful and joking. If someone asks why you aren’t eating from the giant tub of stale generic cookies, cracking a joke about how it isn’t your vice of choice today can break the ice and get the attention off your healthy decision.

  INSTEAD OF: “Eeeewwwww. Haven’t you ever eaten a real cookie?”

  TRY: “Thanks, but I’m saving my heart attack for the weekend.”

  3. Order creatively

  No one will make fun of you for making healthier decisions if they don’t notice. Ordering a burger and dissecting the meat from the bun is certain to draw attention, but there are plenty of things you can order that won’t cause a second glance.