Ten great Tips for hanging on to your Omega-3s while eating out at Restaurants
Ten Tips for Holding on to your Omega-3s while Eating out at Restaurants
(without having to interrogate the waiter!)
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Choose a restaurant in which Omega-3s have traditionally played a strong role: Japanese, Scandinavian, Greek and other Mediterranean restaurants, as well as any fish restaurant and restaurants that specialize in pasture-fed meats. This is more than half the battle in eating out. With so many healthy, high Omega-3 options on the menu, all you have to do is restrain from ordering the fried foods.
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Avoid the fried foods in any restaurant (unless you know they fry in canola oil or this is a very rare, or special, occasion) and order broiled, grilled or baked meats and fishes.
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Start, or end, your meal with a simple salad as most Mediterranean people do.
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Dress that salad with olive oil and vinegar you mix at the table (unless you are in a very fine restaurant where the dressings are light). This is a great way to avoid the heavy dressings that many restaurants serve. It’s also a great way to make sure the olive oil is fresh. Taste a little bit of the oil before you make your dressing and ask the waiter to replace it if it has gone rancid. (Be suspect of any bottle of olive oil that is sitting out in the sun or in the window.)
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Eat bread without butter as most Europeans do. This is more of a weight tip than an Omega-3 tip; in Europe, butter is only eaten with bread at breakfast. One has the whole day to burn off those calories.
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Look for Indian restaurants that cook with canola oil since many Indian restaurants put this on their menus. Canola oil (also known as rapeseed oil) is as traditional in Indian cooking as ghee or clarified butter. What isn’t traditional and what causes Indian food to be extremely heavy (and promote weight gain) is sunflower and safflower oils, two inexpensive oils that are full of omega-6s.
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Pay attention to how you feel after a restaurant meal. If you feel sluggish and heavy, avoid that restaurant in the future. If you feel light (though satiated) and alert, frequent it more often.
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If you eat out often for breakfast, bring a bottle of ground flax seed so you can add flax seed meal to your oatmeal or yogurt.
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Encourage those restaurants you frequent often, to switch to canola oil for most of their cooking and to provide ground flax seed to their customers.
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Choose fresh fruit or cheese to end your meal and take a pass on prepared desserts. Berries are full of Omega-3s and many fine cheeses are made from the milk of animals that have been raised on grass (think Omega-3s) rather than grains (think Omega-6s).
Choose fresh fruit or cheese to end your meal and take a pass on prepared desserts. Berries are full of Omega-3s and many fine cheeses are made from the milk of animals that have been raised on grass (think Omega-3s) rather than grains (think Omega-6s).Leave a comment
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