In today's "hurry-up" world, we want everything to be fast, including our meals. It's so convenient to swing by McDonald's or Burger King and pick up a meal, but what will it means in terms of your healthy lifestyle? How many calories are there in that #2 meal, with large fries and a large Coke? All the fast food restaurants are trying to pitch themselves as having "healthy" alternatives - KFC has a big sign over their menu featuring a grilled chicken meal with only 370 calories (but the sodium content - nearly 1800 mg - is in fine print).
How do we know what we're eating? Years ago, we had to rely on little calorie-counting books that gave us their best guess on very general categories of food. But with the proliferation of information available on the internet, you're only a few clicks away from looking under the hood of your favorite restaurant's menu. Here are a couple of sites that can help you:
http://www.foodfacts.info - Fast Food Facts has comprehensive information on 21 of the most popular fast-food and specialty restaurants (like Krispy Kreme). You can search by restaurant, or sort the results based on calories, sodium, carbs, and other content.
http://www.calorieking.com/foods/ - Calorie King has their own membership plan, but you don't have to join to look up foods in their database. You can search not only the entire menu of hundreds of restaurants and fast food chains, but you can look up specific foods in every category imaginable, from beverages to desserts and everything in between.
Confession time: My old breakfast favorite from Sonic - two sausage, egg, and cheese burritos - has a whopping 940 calories, 60 grams of fat, 650 mg of cholesterol (more than double the recommended cholesterol for an entire DAY!), and 2280 mg of sodium. And back in those days, I thought I was making a healthier choice because it was a burrito instead of a biscuit! Throw in a lunch at McDonalds, and I was already over 2500 calories, 127 grams of fat, and nearly 4000 milligrams of sodium, with dinner still awaiting me.
No wonder I feel so much better after being off of that stuff for just 3 months!
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