Hello all...

I work for a publisher of travel and food guides and as someone who spends nearly 300 nights a year on the road eating, I am constantly fighting the battle of the bulge.

My latest assignment is to begin the development of a line of periodic guides for most major cities that provide travelers with a listing of restaurants that offer healthy alternatives. This doesn�t mean they only offer healthy, but at a very minimum provide their diners with a choice.

We independently review every facility, but as part of our format we include comments from those who dine there (anonymously of course). We don�t comment on specific foods, simply because most restaurants will change their menus more frequently than we release updates, but we do provide the following information:

1. Restaurant name
2. Restaurant address (city as a minimum)
3. Website, if there is one
4. Type of food (i.e. seafood, Mediterranean, French, etc.)
5. Average pricing
6. Hotels conveniently located close to the restaurant
7. Your comments

Obviously, I can�t possibly locate every restaurant in every major city that does this, so I am coming to you for your input and help. If anyone is interested in participating, we would appreciate your comments and details on your favorite places to eat while on the road that allow you to keep your waistline in check. Additionally, if you feel we have omitted information that would add to the usefulness for travelers, let me know.

Please PM me with your stories and details. Anyone who participates and provides us with a review suggestion will receive a free 1-year subscription once we have visited the establishment and the guide is released. We expect the guide to be available later this year or early 2009.

Moderators, if this violates any of FT�s policies please accept my apologies and feel free to delete this post.

I can't really help on any actual restaurant - I find that your own food preferences can help you stay slim.

For instance, in Tokyo someone who prefers Soba to Ramen noodles will likely ingest significantly less fat, just as someone who chooses a flame grilled fish, miso soup, rice and pickle set will be eating less calories than someone tucking into fried and breaded pork cutlets (tonkatsu) or a mound of tempura, or who finishes their meal with a couple of pieces of fruit rather than a pudding.

Many of my own thoughts on how best to lose weight are being reflected in a new UK series: Cook Yourself Thin
http://www.channel4.com/food/on-tv/cook-yourself-thin/
Popular recipes from celebrity chefs (including Gordon Ramsey) are given a low fat makeover.
Members of the cook yourself thin club community section may be able to help you compile your list. Your aims seem to be similar to theirs.
http://www.channel4.com/food/on-tv/c...-club_p_1.html

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If you are only interested in US restaurants now would be the time to say so.

Do you want to include airports in various cities? Eating healthy at the airport can be a real challenge. I know that I, as a frequent traveler, would be interested in such a book.

Thank you for your reply LapLap, but I think you may have missed my point.

Our purpose is not to educate on how to remain thin while traveling, but rather to simply provide a guide to those traveling to a particular location who are seeking healthy alternatives (be it for weight issues or health requirements) to the usual fast food and chain establishments that don't really offer a healthy choice (have you ever seen the fat and calories in those so called healthy salads from the fast food places?!?!?).

Virtually all travelers can relate to arriving in a city not knowing anything about the area or local establishments and thus are somewhat forced to return to those places that are familiar simply because they don't know what is available to them. Additionally, many of us are not in one place long enough to get to know the area, so a quick and convenient guide would help to solve that issue.

Number 5858 - ABSOLUTELY!!! We want to know about any place that our readers would find of value, and that is actually one of the first things that came to my mind as well. Most airports offer little more than fast food or chain foods some of which are only disguised as a healthy alternative. I sometimes find myself choosing hunger over whatever is available simply because I would rather be hungry than clog another artery!! Plus, if there isn't a healthy choice in whatever airport I happen to be in, it would be nice to know of establishments that are close to the airport. I often find myself having enough time to kill at the gate that I could have stopped at some place along the way for a quick meal had I known they existed.

I thought that was my point. There isn't much in a Fast Food place I'd want to eat, so I rarely go in them.

You still haven't said if you are only interested in US restaurants.

For instance, in the UK (if I had to) I could go into a MacDonalds restaurant, get a salad and put as little dressing on it as I wanted to. (So I'm afraid I haven't seen the fat and calories in those so called healthy salads from the fast food places - the fat and calories come in sealed packets which I can choose not to douse the food with.)

Or I could go anywhere that sells Kebabs and ask for salad in pitta with, perhaps, just a touch of Hummus and a couple of dolmades.

Perhaps it's different in the US, but in the UK and Japan finding non-fattening food isn't really a problem, you just need to want to eat it.
In Spain you have these two options
Burger King: grilled chicken salad. Calorías: 210
McDonald’s: Grilled Chicken Caeser Salad : Calorías; 200
You can even get Gazpacho in McDonalds in Spain (it's made by Alvalle and comes up as 30/35kcal per 100mls http://www.alvalle.es/ing/index.html - it's actually delicious!)

Perhaps there are places that don't offer healthy alternatives to whatever it is their customers eat there - but I don't know what those places are because they really do slip beneath my radar.

Are things really that bad in the US? I've only been to New York, Las Vegas and San Francisco and found no shortage of healthy food there.

A British airport will have a seafood bar and a Pret-A-Manger almost as standard.

But it definitely is a question of awareness and 'education'. Even people who are aiming to lose weight won't necesasrily adapt their eating habits despite having alternatives right in front of them. So they continue to buy a lamb doner kebab slathered in sauce and it doesn't occur to them to ask for grilled chicken pieces instead, never mind the pita salad and dolmades option.

I agree with LapLap that it is more of personal choices but I also agree that places with good "healthy" food are not always easily found (especially in airports - ok, that goes for good unhealthy food too). I normally have to hunt through the whole terminal before finding anything that is lower in fat.

I always make it a habit to eat healthier food when I travel, especially at airports since I have been contorting myself in Y for a few hours with not much of a movement and because I normally cant get my full workout in at the hotels.

My solution would be to eat sushi all the time since I dont eat the roll kind (which are drowned in sauces) - high in protein and low in fat.

drew

Th UK is on a bit of a health kick at the moment with lots of kneejerk programs warning about bad and unsuitable diets. Last night we were treated to a Jamie Oliver special showing the internal organs of a 25stone man who died of heart failure - seeing the fat INSIDE his body was unbelievable - his heart was twice the usual size and riddled with the stuff and fat had pushed his lungs up so they were a fraction of their normal size. Must have been awful for him

I'm posting again because of a program tonight which focuses on eating out in Britain.

http://www.channel4.com/news/article...r+food/1293447
Here's a summary

"Britain is the most obese nation in Europe, and we're continuing to pile on the pounds. Many of us believe it's not our fault, choosing to blame our genes, age or metabolism. Others find their weight gain a complete mystery.

This investigation examines the excuses we make for our increased girth and debunks the myths that mask our calorie consumption. Journalist Jane Moore examines how much food we're really eating and puts the spotlight on the food industry to reveal what effect our increased dining-out habit is having on our health.

Moore takes a group of children undercover to find out just how much fat is on the menu for kids in Britain's favourite family restaurants. She meets a family who insist that despite eating healthily and exercising they seem unable to shift their excess weight.

With the help of a fridge-cam and a little secret surveillance, Dispatches attempts to unearth the root cause of their problem. "


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I saw the same program last week which showed that many of the ready meals people buy at supermarkets which are labelled as being 'low fat' or 'healthy options' were terribly misleading:

"Dispatches investigates the claims made by a range of popular products, subjecting many of them to laboratory analysis. The results are unappetising - labelling can be grossly inaccurate, 'healthy' options can have more calories than ordinary ranges and supermarkets are stocking some products that make unsubstantiated health claims.

Dispatches examines the accuracy of nutritional information on the packaging of many convenience foods and finds a dramatic difference between what some labels state and the reality - revealing a huge margin for error in some measurements such as the percentage of fat - and the flawed legislation that allows misleading information to be featured on packaging."

This is really the root of why I believe it really is down to Education and awareness. The only person I trust to decide if a product is a healthy one or not is myself. If store bought meals (which are regulated and subjected to a degree of scrutiny) can't be relied on to offer the health benefits they claim, there's no guarantee a restaurant will be modifying its own meals to a level that I would consider satisfactory before presenting it as a 'healthy' option. If you put 9 spoons of salt in a tomato sauce and add 9 spoons of sugar you won't even realise you're eating that much salt, which helps explain why Pizza Hut can add 2/3 of an ounce of salt (and who knows what else) to one of their pizzas