How to Pick a Health Friendly Restaurant

Learning to recognize a health friendly restaurant, and to spot the unhealthy ones, is a skill that is sure to serve any dieter well. Finding a health friendly restaurant can make it a snap to stay on your diet when you go out to eat. If you're presented with a menu filled with eating options that are good for you, you'll get to dine out without feeling deprived in the moment, or remorseful the next morning. Whether you're looking for a new spot close to home, or are scouting in an unfamiliar town or city during travel, these four simple tips will help you gauge whether an eatery is a healthy friendly restaurant or not at a glance.

Good Sign: Items Marked Vegetarian, Vegan, Or Gluten-Free
Even if you're a confirmed meat eater who makes bread a part of every meal, you'll want to keep an eye out for these terms on a menu. Any restaurant that takes enough care to let its patrons on restrictive diets know what they can, and can't, safely eat is a health friendly restaurant. If a dining establishment features these kinds of dishes, it is quite likely that the ethos of respecting the customer's nutritional needs is consistent throughout the rest of the menu. So, if you see "gluten-free," "vegetarian," or "vegan" on a menu, congratulations! You've got a health friendly restaurant.

Bad Sign: All You Can Eat
No health friendly restaurant would ever have an all you can eat sign, not even on the salad bar. That's because the all you can eat mentality is the opposite of the attitude you'll find in a health friendly restaurant. A health friendly restaurant is a place where the chefs are paying attention to the nutritional balance of each dish, so that if there is a fatty sauce, it is on a lean cut of meat, or if there are a lot of carbohydrates, there are a lot of vitamins as well. In an all you can eat situation where quantity triumphs over quality, there's no chance that the restaurant is interested in looking after your health. If you've got the option, move on and seek out a more health friendly restaurant.

Good Sign: Whole Grain Anything
A health friendly restaurant is likely to want to offer its customers the kinds of foods that will make them feel great in the moment, and great a few hours down the road. This means offering whole grains. Whole grains are packed full of complex carbohydrates, which give you lasting energy and satisfaction. If you scan a menu and pick up phrases like "brown rice" and "whole wheat," get in line for a table. You've just found yourself a health friendly restaurant.

Bad Sign: Added Attraction
If you see a restaurant that advertises extra features like, or a floor show, its pretty likely that it is anything but a health friendly restaurant. There are exceptions to this rule, but in most cases a restaurant that is trying to draw in customers with special attractions is going to have a relatively unsophisticated menu. That means lots of empty carbohydrates and fats, like the kinds you find in anything that's been deep-fried. If you have time, peruse the menu before you make your decision, because sometimes a health friendly restaurant will have a band or special event to get customers attention. But in most cases, at a health friendly restaurant, the food is more than enough of an attraction, and at dining establishments that feature lots of other entertainment, the food is going to be fast, fatty, and pretty lacking in nutritional value.