40 Healthy Fast Foods You Can Eat at the Major Chains
Nutritionists and registered dietitians weigh in.
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Just because a meal is convenient doesn’t mean it’s devoid of all nutrients. In fact, many fast food restaurants offer relatively healthy options that are perfect when you’re on the go or too busy (or tired!) to cook. So we consulted nutrition experts and scoured the menus of every major fast food restaurant to find the healthiest fast foods at every spot, including wraps, salads, bowls, and more. Our biggest takeaway? You’ve got options!
Karin Evans, Ph.D., R.D., C.H.E.S., remembers a time when the only “healthy” picks at drive-thrus were rather sad-looking salads. “Now, I feel like there’s so many options,” she says. And menu variety, she adds, is key to serving everyone’s health needs. It’s easy to immediately associate “healthy” with “low-calorie,” but she brings up that “healthy” is actually a very subjective term.“What may be healthy for one person may not be healthy for another,” she says, adding that some people avoid certain allergens like soy and gluten, for example, while others who are diabetic may have to pay closer attention to sugar intake.
Meet the experts: Karin Evans, Ph.D., R.D., C.H.E.S is a registered dietitian and nutrition consultant. Lauren Harris-Pincus, M.S., R.D.N. is the founder of NutritionStarringYOU.com and author of The Everything Easy Pre-Diabetes Cookbook. Bethany Doerfler is a nutritionist at Northwestern Medicine. Rachel Lustgarten is a clinical dietitian at the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill-Cornell Medicine. Lisa DeFazio, R.D., is a healthy lifestyle expert and nutritionist. Laura Cipullo, R.D. is the founder of Laura Cipullo Whole Nutrition in New York City.
With that in mind, no single order will be universally healthy for everyone. When making our selects, we focused on foods that fulfilled key macros like fiber and protein or included fresh fruit and veggies. We also considered portion size and special diets, like vegetarian, plant-based, or gluten-free. Ahead, find the healthiest fast food options you can eat when you’re really in need of some grub, stat.
Kayla Blanton is a freelance writer-editor who covers health, nutrition, and lifestyle topics for various publications including Prevention, Everyday Health, SELF, People, and more. She’s always open to conversations about fueling up with flavorful dishes, busting beauty standards, and finding new, gentle ways to care for our bodies. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University with specializations in women, gender, and sexuality studies and public health, and is a born-and-raised midwesterner living in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and two spoiled kitties.
Samantha (she/her) is an Assistant Editor in the Good Housekeeping Test Kitchen, where she writes about tasty recipes, must-try food products and top-tested secrets for home cooking success. She has taste-tasted hundreds of products and recipes since joining GH in 2020 (tough job!). A graduate of Fordham University, she considers the kitchen to be her happiest place.
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