Eating By Design at a Restaurant?! It IS Possible!

Vacations are awesome, but they can be one of the hardest times to stay on track with a By Design lifestyle. I was away this month in Nova Scotia. As always, we did our best to Eat By Design while on the go. It was really hard to find anything easily portable that was good for our bodies. Not having a fridge or kitchen to prepare food for the day is a frustrating prospect when you want to be fueling optimally.

The fast food industry just isn’t real food friendly. The limited options are usually over priced, low quality and all around disappointing.  For this reason, we found ourselves eating at sit down restaurants and diners and skipping the fast food scene altogether. It takes a bit of extra time and money but it was worth it to stay on track and have great energy to enjoy our trip to the fullest.

Eating out at home, in Toronto, is a lot easier now that I have been Eating By Design for years. I have accumulated a rolodex in my mind of the places where I know I can go and get the quality food that I want to put in my body. There are also certain chain restaurants that I know have a couple of go-to items that I like to eat. When I am out of town I tend to look for those restaurants. This trip presented a little bit of extra challenge because in small town Cape Breton there is mostly family run operations. Completely unexplored restaurant territory.

In this situation, there is only one thing you can do if you want to stay on track. You have to ask questions, sometimes lots of questions.

If you remember anything from this blog I hope it is this:

Never assume that what you are eating at a restaurant is on track until you ask about the ingredients.

If you genuinely care about what you are using to fuel your body you need to be curious about your food.

The following are guidelines that I have developed for myself to use anytime I am eating at a new restaurant.

Always question soup.

Soups are often thickened with cornstarch or flour. The traditional way of preparing a creamy soup is to use a ‘roux’ to thicken it. A roux is a mixture of fat (usually butter) and flour. It serves to thicken and also stabilize the soup to keep it from separating. If you are dining on a lovely bisque or cream of tomato soup, chances are that perfect texture is due to flour. Now you know to be wary.

Always question thick gravies or creamy sauces.

The same techniques used for thickening soups apply to sauces — liberal measures of flour and cornstarch.

Always question anything that is fried.

Almost all fried food is battered, breaded or ‘dusted’ in flour. Plus most places fry everything in canola, soy, safflower or peanut oils. These oils are engineered to be great for cooking at high temperatures without burning. This quality is great for the food industry but not great for your body. Even pan-fried items are typically cooked in vegetable oils.

Extra tip: Anything labeled ‘crispy’ has more than likely spent time in a deep fryer.

Always question burgers, sausages, meatballs, meat loaf and fish cakes or crab cakes.

These items almost always have flour or bread crumbs holding them together. This rule holds true for packaged items from the grocery store. Be suspicious and check the labels.

Always question stir-fry sauce.

Stir-fry sauces often contain soy sauce. Soy sauce is made from wheat. Even if they don’t specifically say they use soy sauce, they may use oyster sauce, teriyaki sauce or hoisin sauce ALL of which contain soy sauce also known as tamari.  

Always question salads.

Healthy sounding salads may come garnished with croutons, crackers, corn chips or crispy noodles that will grain-up your salad when they are mixed in. In addition, almost all commercial salad dressings contain canola oil. I challenge you to find one at your local grocery store that doesn’t contain canola oil. It will be like the hardest game of ‘Where’s Waldo’ you have ever played.

I don’t want to discourage you with all of this information. There are many restaurant meals that contain only fresh, delicious real foods. You just need to know what to look for and the things to ask to be sure. No one is going to monitor what is going into your body except you.

After a number of years spent working in restaurants, I know that your best bet is to ask the server to check with the chef/kitchen staff.

Well-meaning servers sometimes think that they know the answers without having intimate knowledge of the preparation methods for some of the dishes.

Trust me, asking them to double check with the kitchen is much easier for you and them than sending back dish that you won’t eat.

Indicating that you have a wheat allergy can be useful. Most restaurants have protocols surrounding how they handle allergy meals that will ensure they are circumspect with your food. For instance, if you ask for no croutons and they accidentally get put on your salad. A non-allergy plate will probably just have the croutons picked off. An allergy plate, on the other hand, will get remade to ensure there was no wheat touching your food. An added bonus is that for some reason people tend to be more accommodating when it comes to modifying dishes if its for an allergy versus you seeming like a picky eater.

Lastly, to avoid unhealthy refined vegetable oils, you can ask for your food to be pain fried in butter or olive oil only. For salads, ask for a bottle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar or lemons instead of the premade dressing.

Only you can decide what lengths you are willing to go to for a clean, on track meal. Sometimes you might decide to take the ‘ignorance is bliss’ option or opt to knowingly have an off track meal.

However, when you do want to stay on track, we hope these guidelines will help you to eat like a By Design pro whenever and wherever you are dining!