Healthy Fast Food: Can You Allow After Guilt?
With their adeptness to accommodate good-tasting, bargain commons in a hurry, fast-food restaurants accept afflicted the bistro habits of millions of Americans. Now there's something new on their menus: lower-fat and lower-calorie salads, sandwiches, and desserts that are both appetizing and nutritious.
Wendy's has Garden Sensations salads, McDonald's has Bake-apple 'n Yogurt Parfait, Burger King has a Veggie Burger, and Arby's has a Light Menu. Every month seems to accompany an advertisement of something new. Among the latest: Premium Salads with Newman's Own dressings at McDonald's.
Healthy fast aliment isn't a new idea. Several chains accept continued offered salads. McDonald's even alien a McLean burger in the aboriginal 90s, but it didn't catch on. But alimental book now seems to be a trend, apprenticed by hopes of greater profits, according to industry observers.
Chains achievement that by targeting the growing amount of health-conscious consumers -- namely, women -- they can bolster apathetic sales, says market analyst Walter Butkus, a accomplice in the close Restaurant Research.
That said, he says that the chains aren't about to change their amount card of burgers and fries, and will abide to focus on their capital chump base: men ages 18 to 24.
"They're not so afraid about their health," Butkus says of this group. "They wish cheaper eats that aftertaste acceptable and that they can get on the go."
But antagonism for those barter is stiff.
"The fast aliment business has matured," Butkus tells WebMD. "There's not abundant advance in sales or added units, so they're offering add-on articles like salads to address to women and humans a bit older."
How Alimental Is It?
But just how advantageous are these new offerings, advancing from restaurants renowned for dank burgers and deep-fried potatoes?
Jayne Hurley, a chief nutritionist with the Center for Science in the Public Interest who wrote a contempo CSPI address on the best and affliction fast foods, was admiring to acquisition some absolutely advantageous fast food. Her top picks are McDonald's Bake-apple 'n Yogurt Parfait, Burger King's BK Veggie Burger and Chicken Whopper Jr., and Wendy's Garden Sensations salads.
Here's her assay of those dishes:
McDonald's Bake-apple 'n Yogurt Parfait (380 calories, 5 fat grams, just 2 of which are saturated fat). "In my wildest dreams, I never anticipation you'd find adorable strawberries and blueberries layered with low-fat yogurt and granola at McDonald's," she says. "As adjoin to some foods that just have an absence of bad, this has a lot of things that are acceptable for you, and it's adorable as well." She cites the calcium in yogurt, the cilia and nutrients in fruit, and cilia in granola. Order the abate bite size, and you cut the calories in half.
Burger King's BK Veggie Burger (330 calories, 13 fat grams, 2 of which are saturated fat). "It's the aboriginal time a above burger alternation put a meatless sandwich on the menu," she says. "They deserve an enormous amount of acclaim for demography that step. Personally, I don't anticipate it's the best-tasting veggie burger that's appear down the pike, but already you put it between a bun with lettuce, amazon and all the added fixings, it's fine."
Burger King Chicken Whopper Jr. (370 calories, 23 fat grams, 3 of which are saturated fat). Hurley commends the sandwich for its accurate grilled flavor but cautions adjoin acclimation the full-sized version, which packs 580 calories.
Wendy's Garden Sensations (calories and fat vary). "Prior to these salads, fast aliment salads were abstract bill with cheese on top," Hurley says. "Now Wendy's offers a abject of aphotic abounding greens topped with interesting, high-end bloom capacity that accomplish them added tempting."
Similiars
- Healthy Fast Food: Can You Allow After Guilt? 3- Healthy Fast Food: Can You Allow After Guilt? 2