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Dining Out:  Healthy Options

Walton Wellness knows how hard it can be to navigate a menu and correctly identify a healthy option. Nutritional information at restaurants can be inconveniently located, overly confusing, and provide no comparison with healthier options or substitutions.

To overcome these hurdles, we have created a helpful guide with tips and full nutritional information for restaurants in Walton County to help our community make good dining out decisions. Each page contains tools to help you decide what works with your taste and your waist.

Tips and suggestions help you identify suitable healthy substitutions and nutritional charts of other menu items are included where available.  Combinations of entrées, sides, sauces, dressings and drinks give you an idea of your total nutritional intake from one visit instead of just considering your entrée. Good levels of particularly important nutritional categories such as calories, fat, trans fat, and sodium are highlighted in GREEN while high amounts are marked in RED. We make these assessments based on the daily nutritional requirements at the top of each table and on an assumption that a most people eat 2-3 meals in a day.

The standard daily nutritional requirements are listed at the top of each table. These are an averaged amount that may not fit your sex, size, age, and exercise levels. For a more accurate assessment of your daily requirements, use the USDA’s Dietary Reference Intakes calculator at http://fnic.nal.usda.gov/interactiveDRI/.  Use these values to gain a better perspective of the nutritional information for the foods on this site and to tailor your diet accordingly.

Click on the links below to visit each establishment's page of information.  *Pizza Myths and Tips follows this list.

*Pizza Myths and Tips

Q. Thin Crust is less crust, so it’s healthier, right?

It depends on your particular dietary focus. Thin crusts typically have 40-60 fewer calories per large slice than a hand tossed crust because they contain 4-8 fewer grams of carbohydrates.  BUT, they contain similar amounts of fat and even more in some cases.

For example, Papa John’s Cheese Pizza...

Thin crust cheese - 12 grams of fat

Hand tossed crust cheese - 10 grams of fat

If you like thin crust, enjoy the fact that you are consuming fewer carbohydrates and sodium but take care with the fat grams.

Q. The fewer the toppings, the healthier, right?

It depends on your choice of toppings. Cheese is a necessary evil when it comes to pizza. Without it a pizza wouldn’t be a pizza, but it reigns supreme as the king of unhealthy sources of fat.

When you add more veggie and fruit toppings to a pizza, most restaurants add less cheese to compensate for overall volume. Load up on toppings without guilt. Just make sure they are of the vegetable and fruit variety.

 

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