Restaurant survival strategies Your best bet for meeting your health goals is to cook your own meals at home, where you can control the ingredients and portion sizes. However, we all enjoy eating out from time to time. Just keep in mind that restaurant meals—in particular, fast-food meals—are linked with higher intakes of calories, sugar, saturated fat, and sodium, and lower intakes of healthful foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. One of the biggest problems you'll face when you dine out is sheer portion size, which has increased dramatically over the years. Those bigger portions translate into more calories, sodium, sugar, and saturated fat. Fortunately, the dining scene has improved. The FDA now requires chain restaurants to provide consumers with clear and consistent nutrition information on menus, menu boards, and in writing, which can help you make healthier choices. And more and more restaurants are meeting consumers' desires for healthier fare by providing smaller portions, more fruits and vegetables on the menu, more vegetarian options, and lighter preparation styles. Get your copy of A Guide to Healthy Eating: Strategies, tips, and recipes to help you make better food choices   Eat real food. That’s the essence of today’s nutrition message. Our knowledge of nutrition has come full circle, back to eating food that is as close as possible to the way nature made it. Based on a solid foundation of current nutrition science, Harvard’s Special Health Report A Guide to Healthy Eating: Strategies, tips, and recipes to help you make better food choices describes how to eat for optimum health. Follow these tips for dining out healthfully: Patronize restaurants where good choices—seafood, whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables—abound. Check out the restaurant website in advance in order to decide what you'll order, instead of making impulse decisions. Many restaurants post their menus online, enabling you to find the healthiest entrees. Some even list nutritional information on menu items. Beware of those with high calorie, fat, sugar, and sodium levels. Skip pan-fried or deep-fried foods. Instead, look for foods prepared with healthful techniques, such as baking, grilling, poaching, or roasting. Avoid dishes prepared with gravy and heavy sauces. Or ask the waiter to use half the sauce or to serve the sauce on the side so you can decide how much of it to use. Because gravy is often made with fatty pan drippings from meat, it's relatively high in saturated fat. Many sauces are made with butter and cream, which are also high in saturated fat. Resize your portions: split a meal with a friend, order small plates or side dishes, or take half of it home for lunch the next day. Take advantage of the "small plates" trend, in which you and your dining companions share small servings and avoid large portions of single dishes. Get extra vegetables. Many restaurant entrees don't come with a generous serving of vegetables. But you can easily remedy that by asking for more vegetables, ordering vegetables from the side dish selection, or substituting vegetables or a salad for a less,healthful side dish, such as fries. Lighten up dessert. Skip the indulgent, rich desserts, such as ice cream, cakes, and pastries (some can contain more than 1,000 calories) and go for simple treats, such as berries and peaches. If you want a sweet dessert, share it with others at your table. You'll get the full taste, but just a fraction of the calories, sugar, and unhealthy fats. Watch those beverages. Sweetened drinks (often refilled during the meal) and alcoholic beverages can add hundreds of calories to your meal. Opt for sparkling water, plain tea, or coffee. For more tips on making nutritious choices while eating out, read A Guide to Healthy Eating, a Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School.  Image: VioletaStoimenova/Getty Images Share this story:

Are organics worth it? Organic foods continue to grow in popularity. Organic sales broke through the $50 billion mark in 2018 for the first time, according to the Organic Trade Association. Organic foods are clearly healthier for the planet, because they support an agricultural system that avoids synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and promotes a more biodiverse ecosystem, with attention to the health of waterways, soil, air, wildlife, farm workers, and the climate. However, there isn't clear evidence that organic foods are also healthier for people. An observational study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2018 followed nearly 70,000 French adults and found that those with the highest consumption of organic foods had a 25% reduced risk of cancer over the seven years of the study. But this type of a study doesn't prove cause and effect, and there were some shortcomings inherent in the methodology, so more research is needed. One drawback for many people is that organic foods come at a higher price. If you're interested in organic production, focus your food dollars where it matters the most—by avoiding the types of fresh produce most likely to retain pesticide residue. The Environmental Working Group publishes a list called the Dirty Dozen that names the fruits and vegetables with the highest levels of pesticide residue when grown conventionally: 1. strawberries 2. spinach 3. kale 4. nectarines 5. apples 6. grapes 7. peaches 8. cherries 9. pears 10. tomatoes 11. celery 12. potatoes 13. hot peppers (an extra item in 2019). The Environmental Working Group also publishes a list called the Clean Fifteen, which names the foods that have the lowest levels of residues and are therefore fine to buy in conventional form: 1. avocados 2. sweet corn 3. pineapples 4. sweet peas, frozen 5. onions 6. papayas 7. eggplants 8. asparagus 9. kiwis 10. cabbages 11. cauliflower 12. cantaloupes 13. broccoli 14. mushrooms 15. honeydew melons. If you prefer organic and your budget can handle it, that's fine. But the most important step you can take toward a healthier diet is simply eating more fruits and vegetables, whether they're organic or not. The health benefits of eating more produce—even if it is conventionally grown—far outweigh the downsides of higher pesticide residues. And just because snack foods such as chips and cookies have labels that say organic, that does not equal healthy. For more information about buying and eating organic food, read A Guide to Healthy Eating, a Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School.  Image: ThamKC/Getty Images Share this story:

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A Guide to Healthy Eating: Strategies, tips, and recipes to help you make better food choices Featured content: • A healthy eating style • Choosing healthful carbohydrates • Finding the best fats • Picking healthful protein • Vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals • Making healthy beverage choices • Putting it all together Click here to read more »