A recent article over at Yahoo Health focuses on the best and worst restaurant menus.

The authors of the article looked at 43 national chain restaurants and judged their food choices based on the nutritional value of the individual items. They judged the menus based on the following criteria:

• healthy vegetable sides
• calories in kid menu items
• healthy, kid friendly adult menu items
• presence of trans fats
• non-soda drinks

The best restaurants on their list included Chick-fil-A, Subway, Boston Markets, and (surprise) McDonald’s. These four chain restaurants score As or Bs on the chart. For the restaurants on the low end in the article, the authors chose Applebee’s, IHOP, Olive Garden, Outback, Red Lobster, and T.G.I. Friday’s. For the rest of the list and more on the criteria they used, check out the article link above.

Listings like this give us all more options when helping our patients to make healthier choices. Keep your eyes open for news items and keep the articles or links so that you can refer your patients to these resources. Another resource is to contact dietitians in your facility or area to get tips from them. Many will have hand outs for you to hold on to so you have things to hand out to your patients when they need that kind of pocket reinforcement.

More nutritional information is available from the authors’ site at Men’sHealth.com at Eat This Not That? Sign up for their free weekly newsletter.

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