Fast Food Restaurant's Healthy Options

Eating healthy is hard enough, but given our fast paced lives, it is almost impossible. The key to eating well is planning and preparation. However, there are some days when we simply cannot avoid the quick fix of a fast food restaurant.
I recently stumbled upon a great blog on Yahoo! called Hungry Girl, including this great article on Top Ten Guilt Free Fast Food Finds. Print out this blog entry and keep it in your car, purse or even laminate a copy to keep in your wallet.
The good news is many fast food establishments have made recent changes to offer more and more healthy food options. In addition to eliminating trans fat (Wendy's was the first), the drink and side dishes have also gotten healthier (baked potatoes, fruit, bottled water, fat free milk, green tea, etc.). Some additional tips to keep your calorie count down while eating out include:

• Be aware of the condiments, sauces and salad dressings. This is the easiest way to avoid extra calories. Skip the dressing (ask for lemons or lemon juice), sour cream and cheeses. Stick with mustard, vinegar and low calorie dressings.
• Skip the bread, buns or rolls, especially those made with white flour. Instead, eat your burger without the bun (or stick between two pieces of lettuce), go with a whole wheat bread or even a wrap.
• This may sound like common sense, but avoid super sizing meals, ordering double cheeseburgers, forget the fries and don't order soda.
• A great substitute for those delicious fries is a baked potato. It isn't the healthiest option, but a baked potato with mustard will save you about 500 calories over a large french fry.
• Skip the yogurt parfait with fruit and granola. These can have almost as many calories as a cheeseburger. Granola is loaded with calories and fat and the fruit is more of a fruit syrup. Instead, get fat free milk with the fruit cup (this is really fruit).

There are also fast food restaurants dedicated to healthy eating and more and more opening each day. Chipotle, a McDonald's franchise, offers healthy TexMex cuisine with many organic ingredients. YaYa's is a charbroiled chicken franchise that is excellent. Finally, Au Bon Pain has tons of healthy menu items (just make sure you can resist all of their great baked good). The great thing is most of the fast food chains have the nutritional information online so you know what you are getting into before you order. What are some of your favorite fast food menu items? Do you have any tips on how to eat healthy when eating out? I would love to hear your comments!