Tips For Eating Out With Your Family – Being Parents

How often do you eat out? Do your children always eat at home? We know that maintaining a healthy diet is easier when we prepare meals at home. But sometimes you will have to eat out as a family.

Here are some suggestions for choosing the best options from those available. You will find that it is easy to choose the healthier alternatives. By following our advice, you will be able to improve your health without giving up a varied and rich meal.

Choose a location with various options

If you are going to eat out with your family, try to choose a place with a varied menu. Obviously, children prefer to eat in a fast food restaurant, but they can go to a normal restaurant.

The best option may be places with a buffet style menu. Of course, make sure it’s not a themed buffet. For example, a pasta buffet because it is not healthy for 60% of what they eat to be pasta. Make sure there are options with vegetables, fruits, meat, and grains.

Order or serve a variety of preparations

If you’ve chosen a classic restaurant to eat out, just order foods similar to what you prepare at home.

If you’ve opted for a buffet-style restaurant, you need to be careful not to overeat low-nutrient foods or run out of healthy foods. Something that works perfectly is dividing the plate like this:

• ½ part of the plate for the vegetables. If possible, whether baked or steamed. If you can’t control this, you should at least avoid fried vegetables or those in very fatty preparations.
• ¼ of the plate for carbohydrates. It is essential to see that there are different options and to choose what you like the most: a portion of pasta, mashed potatoes, fries, etc.
• ¼ of the plate for the proteins. Normally you will find protein cooked with vegetables or carbohydrates. You can choose options with vegetables if possible.

• Remember to drink plain water or fresh water flavored with natural fruits instead of carbonated drinks.

This composition of the plate comes under the method known as the Harvard plate, which can be included in what is called the Mediterranean diet. This type of diet has been shown to be beneficial for medium and long term health.

Be careful with the desserts!

Your children will probably want to eat outside for desserts. It’s a good idea to let them eat something as long as it’s not their main or excess meal.

To make sure everyone has eaten healthy, you can make the rule of having to finish the previous dish first. If you eat in a restaurant, choose desserts made with fruits, plain yogurt and other natural elements. Jellies, pieces of fruit, or fruit with yogurt are good options.

Remember that eating fruit is beneficial for your health. Research published in the International Journal of Epidemiology ensures that consumption of these fruits is associated with lower mortality from all causes.

In the case of a buffet restaurant, your children will surely go for desserts that are too high in calories. A good tip is to balance fruits or vegetables like grated carrot with lemon with a small slice of cake they’ve seen.

Eat healthy at the movies?

In addition to eating with your family, you can decide to go out to the movies. Here are some tips to make your family relaxation time healthier:

• Choose natural or buttery popcorn and avoid chocolate or caramel popcorn. The first two options are healthier because they don’t use sugar or preservatives. Although the buttery ones should be the last option, they are still an alternative.
• Water or unsweetened soda instead of regular soda. Ideally, choose only water, but if you want a little flavor, it can be soda without sugar. We better leave out the classic soda.
• Natural snacks instead of candy. Most cinemas have an area where you can buy cereals and natural sweets such as peanuts, pistachios, walnuts or dried fruit. It is better to choose something like this rather than chocolates, ice creams and other sweets that are too high in sugar.

Eat healthy at fast food outlets

When you eat with your family, sometimes you want to go to a fast food restaurant. In this case, try to follow the rules of the healthy dish. In most restaurants there are salad options, but avoid salad dressings as they are high in sugar and salt. Complete with the burger or pizza of your choice and water or a soda without sugar.

Fast food restaurants are the more complicated alternative. For starters, your kids will want to order exactly what’s the least healthy on the menu. Plus, finding good, healthy options isn’t easy.

With these tips for eating as a family, we’re sure you’ll be able to keep everyone healthy even if you aren’t cooking yourself.