Review: 5 Seasons Brewery, Atlanta, Ga.

When a place showcases the "brewmaster's philosophy" on its website, a wise man makes allowances for the food quality. When that same place also features the "chef's philosophy" and goes on at some length about farm-to-table cuisine, sustainable agriculture and locally-sourced produce, a wise man elevates his expectations.

Honey curry grilled Georgia chicken

Only to have them dashed.

My excursions as The Restaurant Dieter are sandwiched in around my day job and other responsibilities. That's how I found myself in Atlanta's West Intown neighborhood with a half hour or so for dinner before an event. It was close. I figured what the heck.

The lobby was full of partial quotes from various publications touting the food. Selective editing is wonderful, isn't it? Perhaps this review will be summarized as: "wonderful, isn't it?"

The menu was certainly ambitious and referenced several cuisines and cultures. Starters and small plates that included spelt grain bread; alligator egg rolls, sea scallops with lardons, strawberries, orange glaze and watercress; and crab and cream cheese dumplings and ponzu sauce. Mains ranging from grilled Maine lobster to Georgia rabbit enchiladas and Coca-Cola seared duck breast. Plus it offers grilled pizzas, sandwiches and salads and impressive list of sides. No continent was ignored.

Cold, cold, cold

When edamame is on the menu, I always say yes. Whatever follows, I know I've at least consumed some satisfying lowfat protein. A cup served in the pods is about 110 calories and 3.5 grams of fat, but it has 9 grams of protein and 9 grams of fiber.

On the menu, I somehow missed that this dish was served cold. Although topped with a generous dusting of a smoked sea salt, nothing could compensate for the unappetizing temperature. It was as if I'd gone to my local Trader Joe's, bought them frozen, dumped them on the plate and sprinkled the salt. A little steamer -- heck even a microwave -- would have helped.

To choose a main, I asked the server's advice: What was light, lowfat and healthy? He recommended an organic salmon in a red Thai curry with vegetables and sticky rice. Given that a Thai red curry typically includes fattening coconut milk, I asked about sandwiches. For this, he recommended a honey curry grilled chicken sandwich served on focacci, and I agreed.

The sandwich came with fries. But, of course, my hosts were happy to substitute that for a soup or side salad for another $1.50. To a dieter, this is a glaring Vegas-size sign that says: "Hey chub, you are not welcome here." We should reward such restaurants by never going. Period.

The chicken sandwich may have come from Georgia, but it had no accent at all. It was so bland it might have been...Midwestern. This was despite a few strips of roasted red pepper and the yellowish sheen that said it had been marinated in some kind of fat with curry powder. The marinade might well have been the curry sauce that was served on the side, which I tasted but left untouched. Visually and in taste, it brought to mind a cheap honey mustard bottled dressing blended with curry powder.

I'd asked for the focaccia to be served without being slathered with butter and grilled, but the server apparently didn't hear. It happens. He immediately apologized and offered to redo it, but I was pressed for time and let it go. It was a lot of so-so bread anyway and therefore calories I didn't need.

5 Seasons certainly is a restaurant with ambitions. Maybe they're best focused on the beer.

Popeye's: Another Chain Getting Healthier. Sort of.

Popeye's is the latest chain restaurant to jump on the health bandwagon with a new menu called Louisiana Leaux, according to Nation's Restaurant News, a leading trade publication.

Low is pronounced with low like beaux is bow. While the menu items show some improvement over regular fare, they're still awfully high in sodium.

Take a look for yourself.

Review: At Paolo's, Eat Ice Cream Like the Italians

The selection at Paolo's

Rome seems to have a gelato shop on every corner. Lounging at the sidewalk tables in front are some of the skinniest people you've seen in your life -- fashionably sockless in their white jeans and Pradas, delicately scooping the national ice cream from a rainbow of plastic cups.

You have my permission to hate them. But take some time to also learn from them.

For starters, despite its rich taste, gelato is lower in fat (5-9 percent) than American-style ice cream (14-25 percent). It tastes good, but lacks that slimy-on-the-roof-of-your-mouth feel that makes a dish of premium ice cream so decadent. The process involves pumping less air into the mix and churning as it cools, making it smoother without needing so much fat.

Then there's the size of a serving. On the way home from work, I stopped at the Atlanta, Ga., location of Paolo's Gelato Italiano, which also has a shop in Charleston, S.C. I bought a small ice cream for $4.50. In thickly accented English, counter person (somebody's mama mia) told me it was 5 ounces. The shop also offered a medium and large.

But even the small was considerably larger than the servings I saw dished up in Italy. My 5-ounce bowl is equivalent to about 150 milliliters. A web site that sells plastic gelato cups offered some of the smaller sizes I was used to seeing (and buying) in Italy, one with as few as 85 milliliters.

Paolo's is genuine -- the founder is from Italy -- but hey, everybody's got to build a business. And Paolo probably knows that Americans aren't going to settle for a typically Italian-sized dish. He's also adopted the American penchant for edible bowls and such that add to the caloric damage.

The $1.50 mini cone

But I will give him credit for his little $1.50 mini cone, which probably holds a couple of tablespoons at best. I've ordered them when feeling particularly vigilant.

This time, the lure of mounds snowy coconut gelato beckoned, which is why I ended up with the small. It was wonderful; smooth and creamy with lots of contrasting texture from the coconut.

The serving probably was more like 6-7 ounces, because Paolo's finishes each dish off with the traditional Italian peak. Palolo's website contains no nutritional information, so I used a number of other websites to tally the score. Several assessed a 4-ounce serving as containing 157 calories, 6 grams fat, 24 grams carbohydrates and 2 grams protein.

But after scooping off the peak and savoring a few bites, I tossed the rest in the trash can. Sometimes wasting $2.25 worth of ice cream is the only rational thing to do.

For evbidence, I took a picture before I tossed it. What do you mean the picture proves nothing? Of course I'm telling the truth.

Small coconut

Just before it went in the trash

From Burger Flipper to Burger Journalist; My History with Restaurants

For a period in the mid-to-late 1970s, I was the best "bun runner" at the McDonald's in Southgate, Mich. -- that is best after Linda Whose-Last-Name-I-Can't-Remember. She was awesome.

Like Linda, without setting up trays of buns (lest they get dry), I could assemble 12 for toasting in seconds, gathering the tops in between my fingers in one sweep of my hands. (Two in-between-fingers had to hold two bun tops each; you try that at home!) In between toasting buns, I usually had time to help the "tray dresser" apply the catsup, mustard, pickles and cheese to the toasted buns while the burgers were finishing on the grill. And I handled all the Filet-o-Fish and pies as well.

It feels so long ago. It was an era in which teenagers were happy to get a job at a reputable fast food restaurant like McDonald's. Now, to hear nieces and nephews talk about it, working fast food is totally lame.

With my white paper McDonald's trainee hat, I started where everybody did: cleaning the tables, floors and bathrooms in the dining room. Then I graduated to making shakes. From scratch. Not pulling the lever and dispensing them into a cup. I said it was a long time ago.

From there, the possibilities for moving up dazzled: making fries, working the counter, cooking the meat and, good God -- filling in for a manager. I stood at the front of the store, wrapping burgers and putting them in the warming bin.

This last assignment left one positively glowing. It involved "calling production," or balancing the supply and demand curves perfectly. Running out of food meant customers waited -- a near mortal sin in those days -- but making too much meant that when food sat around too long, we had to toss it out. Such awesome responsibility.

I was pretty good at most jobs and eventually made it to manager, opening a nearby store in the morning when we first began serving breakfast. Yes, all of those eggs were in fact cracked from a whole egg and scrambled. No mixes in a quart container were used.

One of the benefits of that job was the free food: a sandwich, an order of fries or a fried pie and a refillable drink or a shake. From behind the counter, we also savored the delights we weren't allowed to serve to customers: fries dipped in gobs of tartar sauce, Big Macs with extra everything; the odd sloppy joe assembled on the grill using two beef patties, onions, catsup and mustard and a little sugar; pies with a piece of cheese melted on top; fish sandwiches with lettuce and tomatoes. (This was long before Burger King's "have it your way" challenge: no lettuce was permitted on McDonald's fish then.)

At closing time, anything left in the warming bin was fair game. You could have a Big Mac and cheeseburger nightcap while you were washing down the french fry area for the next day.

Is it any wonder that my weight shot up from 140 as a high school sophomore to 180 by the time I left for Michigan State University? My experiences eating at restaurants in college are a blur, save for the Taco Bell and the bagel shop that were near to the student newspaper. Can you imagine how cheap the all-bean burrito was in those days?

After school, I took a job at The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. After a couple of years there covering neighborhoods and city hall, I became a business writer. It was the dawn of daily newspapers' interest in serious business journalism.

Wichita's business community was known for two things, both of which I would up covering in my five years there: chain restaurants and aircraft manufacturing. It was the place where two brothers, Frank and Dan Carney, founded Pizza Hut in 1958 and minted chain restaurant millionaires all over town. At the time, Wichita also was home to Cessna, Beachcraft, Gates Learjet and Boeing Military Airplane Co.

The interest in chain restaurants was palpable. Pizza Hut was acquired by PepsiCo in 1977, and everybody in town seemed to be looking for the next big thing. There were guys who dabbled in what the industry called "casual theme dinnerhouses" such Chi-Chi's; Wendy's was in its major growth spurt; and the gourmet burger trend was just getting started with Fuddrucker's.

With the vast wealth of PepsiCo behind it, Pizza Hut began seriously experimenting in those years: pizzas with odd ingredients such as barbecue sauce and chicken and my favorite innovation: a multi-layer stuffed pie that tons of crust and cheese in addition to the toppings. It was sort of like a Chicago-style pizza. I'm amazed to find a Bring Back the Pizza Hut Priazzo Facebook page devoted to it and this video on You Tube.

The notion of chain restaurants serving healthy fare was laughable. No one felt the slightest inclination -- save for the folks behind D'Lites, a novel idea from a former college football player that flamed out by the end of the 1980s. Clearly an idea before it's time.

So it's encouraging to see some progress in the industry. With the obesity epidemic we have, you just wish there was more.

Healthy Restaurant News Links

News items of interest to Restaurant Dieters all over:

• The rest of you restaurant owners wake up:  Subway gets 76 percent of all food sales with health in mind.
• Grand Slam out: Denny's features new fit-fare menus.
• Good news, given that a bagel can be a huge carb load: Bruegger's launches menu with under 500 calorie items.
  

Double Portion of Diabetes: Who's to Blame?

The Economist recently reported that between 1980 and 2008, the number of adults with diabetes more than doubled. In the United States, it increased more than 60 percent; women alone jumped 79 percent.

This is clearly not the restaurant industry's fault alone. Most people can eat themselves into a diabetic coma pretty good without much help from Wendy's or Taco Bell.

However, there is ample evidence out there that an increasing number of meals are consumed away from home. Or are consumed at home, but purchased at a restaurant or supermarket takeout counter.

I think the National Restaurant Association can say best: According to the  "Top Ten Facts in 2011"  71 percent of people say they try to eat healthier now at restaurants than they did two years ago."

The emphasis on the word try was mine.

Because we all know that if the NRA had asked if people were successful at this goal, its membership would be put to shame.

Oh, yes, we are trying. But too many restaurants aren't helping.

McDonald's New Mango Pineapple Smoothie

I did something pretty risky as the day headed toward quittin' time. Because The Restaurant Dieter's spouse is out of town, the thought of cooking tonight was a total buzz killer. And then, like a billboard on a lonely highway, a headline popped up on my @TheRestoDieter Twitter timeline:

McDonald's introduces new Mango Pineapple Smoothie.

That led to a decision to try one sometime. Which led to a decision to try one on my commute home. Which led to a decision to trust an entire day of exercise and healthy eating to McDonald's.

All of which leaves me sitting here at my laptop, about to find the McDonald's website and assess the damage. It leaves you, dear reader, likely wondering if this whole Restaurant Dieter thing is a total fraud. He didn't, did he?

I've mentioned before that I count points via Weight Watchers' Points Plus program. After work, I arrived at the Golden Arches having consumed 17 of the 37 food points I can eat each day. I also accumulated 5 points I could use from 50 minutes of weight lifting this morning.

OK, counting now. This is exciting; you're going to see this drama unfold -- live.

To Mickey D's credit, the website is excellent, with search functions that make it easy to find the nutritional information one needs.

The smoothie is 220 calories and 1 gram of fat, which doesn't sound too bad. That is, until you look at the grams of carbohydrate -- 49 in this case. Weight Watchers' easy-to-use Points Plus system awards lower point values for proteins, fruits, vegetables. But you get dinged for carbs and sugars, especially if they are not high fiber.

So to my 17 from breakfast, lunch and snacks add 6 for the smoothie and I'm now at 23. Yow. My nighttime 1/2 cup of Weight Watchers ice cream is slipping away...

Perhaps my entree -- the Premium Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken -- will save me. It clocks in at 320 and 9 grams of fat, which sounds pretty good.

Wait....

Something....

Is missing...

Oh yeah, I did put some dressing on it. Let me dig that packet out of the trash. It's a Newman's Own dressing. Paul was a good guy, a liberal, leftie type who is probably in favor of "the mommy state" taking care of our health. I'm sure those piercing blue eyes would never do me wrong.

The entire pouch of dressing is 100 calories and 6 grams of fat, which is higher than I'd like.

OK, now let's look at the carbs, protein and fiber on the whole package:

Salad (8)  + dressing (3) = 11, so I'm at 34 for the day. I can have my ice cream. I'm pleasantly surprised.

You'd have to count the McDonald's dinner a winner in most respects -- except, of course, for the sodium content: 340 mg in the dressing and 960 in the salad -- close to the 1,500 a person over 51 should eat in an entire day. That salt content is also alarming because of its addictive properties. The danger is not in what I already ate -- but that craving for salt that begins a binge.

Time to go brush my teeth and hope for the best.

It's Not Just About the Food

"Sauce on the side" at restaurants + healthy eating at home do not = weight loss. Exercise has to be a part of it.

At the gym, June 27, 2011

I say that with some conviction but am well aware that scientists and even no-nothings like me continue to debate the issue. Just plug the phrase diet vs. exercise into any search engine and you'll see.

But I know that I tend to do better with both. My first experience with exercise was in the mid-1980s. I'd bulked up nicely in all the wrong places since college graduation. For a bunch of 20somethings on their first jobs, going out to eat and drink was entertainment. Chi-Chi's, with its endless basket of tortilla chips, was a hot ticket in Wichita, Kan., where I lived. Our annual tour of outstate Kansas almost always included a stop at the Brookville Hotel in Abilene, Kan. The menu consisted of a home-style fried chicken dinner with all the trimmings. This included a coleslaw for which I bought the recipe. A batch used 2 cups of whipping cream and a cup of sugar.

Enter an aerobics studio named Body by Schliebe. It was run by a young couple named Tim and Beth Schliebe, he a compact muscled guy and she of the shiny aerobics tights and fabulous leg warmers. They were Wichita's own Jane Fonda, if those words can actually be used together in a sentence. (I was delighted to see that Tim at least is operating a Body by Schliebe in Bend, Ore.) He looks pretty good in the picture on the website.

The first time I went, I nearly fainted. About 10 minutes of knee-slamming aerobics (low-impact was not yet de rigueur) left my head spinning. But the music was hot, and the class seemed to be having fun. I stayed and probably lost 25 pounds without much modification in my eating habits.

Since then, I've been in and out of exercise as my moods and my relationship status changed. Skinny when single; porky when hooked up. I'd kind of fallen off the wagon hard in 2006, when my dad's health issues put a strain on the whole family. What happened next was not fun. On a vacation in Sicily, I had a meltdown.

When I returned to the states, my doctor diagnosed depression and anxiety, put me on an antidepressant, recommended a counselor for talk therapy and said, "Get some exercise."

I took all to heart. In the early days before that recipe kicked in, the depression and anxiety had my body surging and sweating. But when I got on the treadmill for a run, I could feel the surge build to a crescendo and then drain away. The exercise was pumping tons of beneficial chemicals to a brain that sorely needed them. I exercised at least once a day and sometimes twice.

After a year of that routine, I felt good enough to take the next step: joining Weight Watchers. The combination of eating right and exercising melted the pounds away. I lost 8-10 inches in my waistline.

Even today, having gained a couple of inches back, I have a better week when I exercise. I alternate days between free weights and cardio, usually the eliptical machine or a recumbent bicycle, and some yoga.

The exercise burns calories, of course, but it also dumps tons of good endorphins into my brain. That in turn helps with the depression, anxiety and all the little stresses that can drive folks like me to solve them with...a bag of peanut-butter stuffed pretzels.

So get yourself off the couch and do something.

Review: Sweet Tomatoes

Why do so many fat people eat at Sweet Tomatoes?

Maybe because it captures so perfectly the schizo American diet psyche. This is supposed to be a salad bar chain, right? But wait! I can waddle down the hot bar and indulge myself on a cup chicken tetrazzini that has 480 calories and 23 grams of fat. And let's face it, a cup is about half the portion most folks eat.

This is not to mention the baked goods, sweet breads, cheese pizza, cream soups and yes, soft serve.

The use of the verb "indulge" is intentional. The word bounces into view in plus-sized letters on the Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes website home page. You have to wonder if it's a clarion call to the buffet driven among us: "Come on in. Don't be afraid. You'll be able to eat all the fattening stuff you want; but you'll be able to say you went to the salad bar restaurant!"

On the website's nutrition link is the laudable mission statement: "We've always believed that eating fresh, healthy, wholesome food is an important part of leading a well balanced life. Farm fresh. Made from scratch. In fact, our restaurant was founded on this very idea!" (Bold the company's, not mine.)

But what's with all the fattening stuff then, even on the tossed salads menu? Easy. Sweet Tomatoes is a business, and noble deeds don't always pay the bills.

In the 1980s, I covered the restaurant industry as a business reporter for a newspaper. One of the big stories I followed was the birth of a chain called D'Lites in Atlanta. I lived in Wichita, Kan., at the time, the heart of the Pizza Hut empire, and read with great interest about D'Lites. My interest was partly professional, partly personal. I was just a few years out of college, no longer walking to classes and beginning to feel that mid-20s bulge.

D'Lites was the creation of another young guy who apparently was fattening up nicely. His name is Doug Sheley. At 36, the former small college football player owned 18 Wendy's franchises and, oddly enough, a health club. In a Time Magazine interview in 1983, he said he'd gotten the idea because "Every time I walked into the health club, somebody would say, 'How many calories in your Frosty, Doug?'" (This was before chains disclosed such things; the answer is 340 calories and 9 grams of fat for a medium.) The chain featured healthy and light meals. Sheley envisioned it as a McDonald's for the leg-warmer generation.

By 1987, D'Lites was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy court. And Doug Sheley? I found him commenting on a Facebook page devoted to the noble idea that failed. He says he's been approached by folks who would like him to revive the concept. "Never know what might happen with our society getting educated on how important nutrition is for our lifestyles and health," he concludes, clearly wistfully.

Was D'Lites merely ahead of its time, or too monastic in its approach. I never had the pleasure of eating at a D'Lites, so I can't say for sure.

But I do understand why the folks at Sweet Tomatoes are not content to trod that same path to the poorhouse. They've decided to provide the options, leaving it up to us to decide responsibly.

I was responsible up to a point. I had salad with positively gray grilled chicken breast, no croutons or cheese and the fat free Italian dressing (surprisingly good, I thought). But I did have to take about a half-cup of a sweet broccoli salad and grabbed one 4-inch piece of foccacia on my way toward the door.

Life's a compromise, I suppose.

No, I'm Not a Food Critic

Full disclosure: I am not a restaurant critic.

I will rarely critique the ambience of the dining room or write at length about the service in general. I won't show off my knowledge of food. (I am a good cook, but not an expert.) If I can help it, I won't use fancy names for things that might otherwise be known by a common term. Or rely on common terms that make no sense when paired with food terms.

You've been served by this waiter before and felt stoooop-id.

Hello. My name's Caleb. Can I tell you about the specials tonight? Chef has prepared a lovely shabu-shabu featuring rascasse with a mint-cilantro romesco. It's served with a side of chickpea pakora. Our featured appetizer is a chicken lasagna lollypop. Oh, and you have to guess the price because I certainly won't tell you!

That is not me. Where possible, I'll make it simple. What did I have? Was it good? How did the restaurant handle any special requests designed to keep me on track?

I'll leave the bacon-and-babaco profiterole to the pros.

Weight Watchers: Come Prepared with Cash

Weight Watchers weigh-in day is stressful. When most members approach the scale at a meeting, it's Gypsy Rose Lee time. Off comes every article of clothing that can be decently removed in public. Va-va-voom. Hey big eater.....spend a little time with me!

The staff members who weigh us are sensitive and typically speak in hushed tones. It's not like they're a bunch of runway models who bolt upright on their matchstick legs and shriek, "Hey, this guy must have ate a case of Ho Hos this week! He's up 5 pounds!"

But still, we want to do well. In the past, when I'd had a week of travel and restaurant dining, I would slip on these super-lightweight hiking shorts. I weighed them once and determined they were the lightest clothing I owned. I heard that a woman at my regular meeting last week was so worried her blue jeans were too heavy, she asked to borrow another woman's pants for weigh in.

I made my Weight Watchers goal a few years back. After that,  meeting attendance is free, provided you're within 2 pounds of your goal. Mine is 190, and I haven't seen it in two years. I been up as much as 14 pounds. I take some solace in the fact that between weightlifting and the testosterone supplement my doctor has prescribed, I have gained muscle weight. A body composition test two years ago showed me up 7 pounds of muscle.

But wait, there's more. I neglected to mention how much The Restaurant Dieter and his spouse have come to love a certain cream puff shop on the Upper West Side in New York. Or the bagels a few blocks north (with veggie tofu, mind you), which has recently closed. Or the cupcake place in Midtown Atlanta that recently closed. It's not like we didn't try to save it.

Needless to say, the lucky shorts for the 185-pound me aren't so lucky anymore. In fact, by now they've likely been snapped up by somebody at the Goodwill store. I was sure they would never fit again. I'm OK with that. I'm still down 30 pounds, more if you consider the muscle weight gain. My blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol are normal -- not an easy to achieve with the genes I was handed. I can do an hour of cardio and 50 pushups.

But today I went to the Weight Watchers meeting with money in hand, because I knew I'd have to pay the $13 fee required of lifetime members who are over goal. In fact, because I was traveling last month and missed the meeting, I would owe $26. The assumption is: If you weren't here last month for your weigh-in, you probably were over. Good assumption, I'd say.

Before I got on the scale, I removed my glasses, hat, shoes, keys, cellphone. All that was left was gym shorts, underwear and a sleeveless T-shirt. (Wait, did I need that underwear, really?)

Amazingly, I'd lost weight since my last check in --  2.2 pounds -- which might have been blue jean weight because it was April.

Lunch today was turkey sandwich and fruit at home. A friend is celebrating his 50th birthday tonight, and the party will be catered by one of the best Italian restaurants in Atlanta. The temptations for The Restaurant Dieter never end, even when there isn't a restaurant building in sight.

The Restaurant Dieter Was Here

When you're on a crusade -- as I am -- you spread the word in a variety of ways. I Tweet, have a Facebook Page, use Gowalla or FourSquare and now will be spreading the word in person. If you're a restaurant owner and you see this card, it tells you I've visited.

Spread the word.

The Restaurant Shirt: May I Please Have Another?

Finally, there's something on the menu that makes you look good -- even when you overeat.

No less of an authority than The New York Times recently weighed in on a type of shirt apparently known as a "restaurant shirt."

You know the shirt, the Times says: "In bright prints, often with contrasting plackets, cuffs or collars, they are bringing a jolt of Sun Belt pizazz to the once-chillier summer wardrobes of the Northeast. Unapologetically festive, they are cropping up at cocktail parties and restaurants, leavening a dressy sense of occasion with the horseplay esprit of your old college kegger shirt."

Stonestreet in a restaurant shirt

Gee, and I thought they were just gay. Not gay as in festive, though they certainly are. The costume supervisor for ABC's hit comedy "Modern Family" puts actor Eric Stonestreet in a restaurant shirt nearly every week. It doesn't even matter what his character, gay dad Cameron Tucker, is doing.

On the other hand, maybe that costume supervisor does know a thing or two about eating out.

Typically, these shirts are worn untucked. Under that paisley print with contrasting gingham cuffs is a dieter gone rogue.

I should know. I have at least five or six.

Review: The Yogurt Tap, Decatur, Ga.

When it's time to go out for something cold in the summer, my spouse and I battle it out. He wants ice cream, and nothing but. It can be cheap soft-serve like Dairy Queen. It can be high-end gelatto.

What it can't be is frozen yogurt of the kind found at national chains such as Pinkberry and Yoforia, or the local place near our home in Decatur, Ga., The Yogurt Tap. Unless it leaves that slimy feel of buttercream on the roof of his mouth, The Restaurant Dieter's Spouse is not happy. That tang of yogurt makes him wince.

Sometimes, out of pure pity or love, I win. My spouse leaves the engine on, pulls up close and pushes me out at the curb. He waits while I run in for what I hope will be a healthy, cool, lowfat treat.

Yogurt Tap's toppings bar

I say hope because that's all it is. Whether self-serve, as my local place is, or counter-person-assisted, you can pile on the calories from a toppings bar that look like the Candy Land board. Sure, there are fresh blueberries, but just look at all those M&Ms, chocolate chips, granola and hacked up pieces of Snickers bars!

What differentiates The Yogurt Tap from some of the national chains is that there are no brakes. Call it the Old Country Buffet of the healthy yogurt world. You get an enormous bowl, fill it with yogurt yourself, pile on the toppings and pay by the ounce.

Leaving perhaps half the bowl unfilled, I wound up with 8 ounces of yogurt before I'd added a single topping. That's not so bad, given that a 4 ounce serving is billed as 70 calories with 0 grams fat.

Not even I can leave it there. That yogurt tang does need something, and in this case, it was 1/4 cup of chocolate chips, for 80 calories and 4 grams of fat. And when I'm feeling really deserving, I top it off with just one piece of hacked-up Snickers bar.

Whaddaya want? A saint?

Review: Leon's Full Service in Decatur, GA

Bacon in a Glass? With a peanut butter dip?

Gee, how much trouble can a dieter get into when he chooses a restaurant called Leon's Full Service, where that appetizer is one of the most talked about dishes? Or how about that same restaurant's "pub frittes," which can be ordered with 14 sauces ranging from catsup to goat cheese fondue?

It's not that I've lost my mind. I figure The Restaurant Dieter must venture beyond what's safe if there's anything to be learned at all. Besides, it was a weeknight and I wanted to dine close to my home in Decatur, Ga., an intown Atlanta suburb with a charming downtown restaurant scene. 

A couple of years ago that would have been a no-brainer. A franchised location of one of the salad chains, Dressed and Tossed, had opened. I forget which, but it was reliable, fresh and safe. I stopped by on my way home from work at least once a week. It didn't last, unfortunately, and now is home to an office for Kaiser Permanente, the large health insurer. Ironic, isn't it?

Leon's does the "New American" thing in a renovated downtown gas station. The menu hits all the notes, from artisanal cheeses to a grass-fed burger with Tillamook cheddar cheese. Besides the previously mentioned bacon-and-peanut butter starter, there's healthier fare such as PEI mussels and salads.

I opted for the mixed lettuces with chevre, pumpkin seed and an orange tabasco vinaigrette, dressing on the side of course in one of those little portion cups I've mentioned. The dressing missed that bright note of orange that I expected, likely because it was ladled into the portion cup without being thoroughly mixed. The oil floats to the top.

Leon's Full Service "veggieloaf"

For my main, I went for the seared "veggieloaf," which the server described as the "lowest fat thing on the menu." She said it contained quinoa and other hearty grains.

If healthy=ugly -- and let's face facts, sometimes it does -- the veggie loaf was a sure winner. Brown, brown, brown. Was that a dirty kitchen sponge on my plate or dinner? Still, the veggie loaf was nicely browned, but it did not have the oily sheen that screams fat. It had just enough spice to belie the bland appearance.  The veggie loaf was was topped with a tangle of greens, no doubt to boost its visual appeal. It rest atop a cool salad of roast cauliflower, shiitake mushroom and julienned sun-dried tomatoes.

Leftover romesco sauce; had to do it

The whole dish sat atop a pecan romesco sauce, that I felt compelled to mostly avoid. It was excellent, and in very small doses added at least a little kick to the veggie loaf. I have no doubt that the diners most satisfied with this dish mop up every bit of the sauce with the veggie loaf.

Chalk this up as another restaurant meal that's difficult to assess. A Whole Foods recipe for quinoa loaf clocks in at 170 calories and 4 grams of fat for a 6-ounce serving. This was probably more like 8 ounces and tasted richer and denser than the recipe indicates. So let's just be scientific about this and declare it double. You gotta better idea?

Then for the salad: a tablespoon or an ounce of chevre (70 calories, 6 grams fat);  a tablespoon of oil-and-vinegar salad dressing (I always figure using Newman's Own dressings when I don't know -- 75 calories and 8 grams fat) and a tablespoon of pumpkin seeds (47 calories and 4.5 grams fat).

Now for a confession: On a previous visit, I have tasted the bacon-and-peanut butter thing, and damn it was good.

A Weekend of Extremes Visting Family

The Restaurant Dieter was visiting family in the Detroit area this past weekend.

Going home is fraught with diet peril. For starters, there's the emotional baggage, no matter how much you love your family. And even when you can separate yourself some -- I stayed with a friend -- you can often fall into the same bad habits.

Food is love in my family. My spouse thinks it's odd. He tells the story of what happened when my mom once offered him some treat after one of her huge holiday dinners.

"No thanks," he said, falling into food coma on the couch.

"Why not?" she persisted.

"Boy that was big meal. I'm not hungry," he replied.

"Why not?" she inquired, pushing the treat into his mouth until he succumbed.

That tale is another reason I often compare us to the couple in "My Fat Greek Wedding." Food as love figures in their courtship.

By mid-Friday evening, I'd already gotten into the biscotti that my mother and sister bought at a bakery. I couldn't say no, could I? They did it for me. (Insert the rationalization of your choice here.)  I'm sure I had at least four. By the time I was off to my friend Rich's house to sleep, that sweet taste lingered and had me salivating for something. Something...more. Actually, anything more.

I stopped at a convenience store to get some snacks. What's that they say about folks who travel with their own alcohol, for fear there won't be any where they're going? I bought chips -- baked, of course -- plus peanut butter filled pretzels and unsalted almonds.

My friend and I picked at those until the late night dinner he'd arranged arrived: a pie from a Detroit institution called Pizza Papalis. It bills itself as Chicago-style pizza, but it has a Greek surname. The first location was in downtown Detroit's Greektown neighborhood. The pizza is double crusted, with layers of cheese and fillings.

I had two pieces of the vegetarian. Pizza Papalis' website doesn't include nutritional information. Not that I stopped to think and look it up anyway. Two pieces racked up at least 1,000 calories and 80 grams of fat, judging by the nutritional information provided by the helpful folks at Uno Chicago Grill, which also specializes in deep dish.

Then -- smack me silly for compounding the error -- I went straight to bed. At 4 a.m. I woke to the wicked acid reflux moment I surely deserved. I chugged a Diet Coke and sat up at least an hour.

I resolved to behave the next day. Mom and I had lunch at Ram's Horn. It draws a crowd Mom's age -- 85 -- and has some decent large salads. I ordered a modified Cobb: yes chicken, no cheese, no bacon, fat-free raspberry dressing on the side.

When it arrived, I had a salad dressing epiphany: That fat-free raspberry vinaigrette, ordered many times at many restaurants, just tastes plain awful. A serving may only be 50 calories and no fat, but it's just not worth it. Especially when water and high fructose corn syrup are the first two ingredients listed. Next time, I'll spend the calories on a reasonable dressing, or ask for vinegar and oil. (The latter is no guarantee of a satisfactory dressing either, however; I've been handed canola oil and cider vinegar.)

For dinner, my sister had a coupon for Red Lobster. The full-color regular and specials menus are a case study in modern menu design. Flavors and fat layered until the fish is mostly obscured, but it's what the customers seem to want. How about that spicy coconut and citrus shrimp from the specials menu? 1,230 calories, 70 grams fat and 3,490 grams of sodium -- more than double what an adult over 51 should consume in a day.

It aims at a wider swath than the best fish restaurant I've been to: Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin in New York. I'd only been on Weight Watchers a few months when we went. We had the tasting menu, which was a parade of amazing dishes that highlighted, rather than buried, the fish. It was impossible to figure the points value, but it all tasted so clean and fresh that I didn't even bother.

Last weekend, in more modest surroundings, I went for shrimp cocktail -- always a good bet -- and ordered grilled whitefish from the "Lighthouse" fresh catch menu. It was a half-sheet of paper, no color, no illustrations -- clearly for the rare ascetic like myself. I requested my meal prepared with no fat; it came out with a sheen that told me: Even if my request was honored, it picked up some fat on the grill. The flavor was excellent -- fish, rather than a coating, sauce or fat. With steamed asparagusas a side, I had a pretty good day.

Of course, I did have to have one of those ubiquitous cheddar biscuits, which added 150 calories, 8 grams of fat and 350 of sodium. Sabotage is everywhere, I'm afraid.

But give Red Lobster credit for trying. The Lighthouse menu saved me. And the company's website has good information on healthy eating and a food calculator so you can plan your meal in advance.

The Restaurant Dieter's cookbook

In my introduction to The Restaurant Dieter, I forgot to mention that I had edited a healthy foods cookbook. It seemed so long ago, until I was looking for something and realized copies still were available on Amazon.com.

The HeartSmart Cookbook was a joint venture of the Detroit Free Press, my employer in the mid-1990s, and the Henry Ford Hospital Heart & Vascular Institute in Detroit. At the time, I edited the food section (along with some others). A weekly recurring feature in the food section was the HeartSmart recipe.

My collaborators in this affair were the woman who ran the program at the hospital and the certified home economist who ran the test kitchen at the Detroit Free Press. The latter was a goddess of domestic affairs; for one Thanksgiving, Jeanne crafted a dinner that could be turned out in two hours. She taught me almost everything I know about food, including and especially, the danger posed by raw eggs in a recipe. I think of her fondly and often when I'm cooking.

One of my chores for the newspaper was to edit the recipes in the Food section, which is not as easy as one might think. A mistake in a newspaper story is unfortunate, but a mistake in a recipe can be a disaster. The meatloaf recipe that called for a cup of milk, when it should have called for a tablespoon, still gives me nightmares.

"What am I supposed to do with this mixture?" the woman on the phone demanded of me.

"Add more breadcrumbs?" I offered hopefully.

And then there was that recipe that called for you to mash the potatoes and set them aside. What you were supposed to do with them later to complete the dish was never clear.

Of course, when you're publishing a cookbook, the necessity for recipes to be accurate is all the more important. A correction cannot be issued in the newspaper the next day. So my job was to thoroughly check the recipes we'd planned to include plus edit the text.

It turned out rather well and racked up sales that any cookbook author today would crave. It helped that the book was offered for sale at the many speaking engagements undertaken by the Henry Ford Hospital Heart & Vascular Institute.


Still, it was nice to pull up Amazon and see 14 new for $6.50; 63 used from 1-cent; and one listed as "collectible" for $3.99.

And, of course, to read the lone user review, which says:

"I have loved this book and the dishes I've made from its recipes for years. The editors' knowledge of food and flavor balance is apparent in every recipe I've tried. Some recipes do not excite me but eventually I may try them. Not every recipes is quick to prepare but I've always found that the results have been worth the time I've spent. I bought my first copy over 20 years ago, recently gave that to a friend and bought another copy for myself. I couldn't be without it. Oh, yes, and the best part is that the food is healthy!"

Review: Pier 9, New York City

The Restaurant Dieter's spouse was trying so hard to do the right thing. As I've previously mentioned, eating out is his passion. When we're in New York, it's nearly an obsession.

I had a nice lean turkey sandwich on a bagel with an apple for lunch. He walked a couple of blocks to his new favorite, Luke's Lobster. But TRD Spouse was trying hard yesterday when he went online to make reservations for pre-theater dinner with a friend.

With his overworked Open Table account humming, he booked Pier 9 in Hell's Kitchen because of its emphasis on fish. Isn't love grand.

The menu was promising. It offered dishes for the decadent diner (Lobster Mac 'n' Cheese) to, in the entrees, a section entitled "simply prepared." With baby bok choy as a side, it featured six fish choices and three sauce choices: green curry/shiitake, lemon/Tuscan olive oil/capers and verjus emulsion. The latter turned out to be a butter sauce,  so I opted for the curry/shiitake.

Razor Clam Ceviche

For a starter, you can never go wrong with ceviche. I always imagine a half-cup of so of fresh fish, drenched in a bright acid with a nice clean flavor. That was spot-on on most counts, but the portion was sorely disappointing. Three shells contained, at most, three tablespoons of ceviche. It's New York, but at $13 one somehow expects a little more.

Whoever was prepping scallops in the kitchen that day had a really heavy hand with the salt. Mine were so salty they should have been sent back as inedible. My friend ordered the seared day boat scallops, which came in a celery root puree with eggplant, capers, raisins and pine nuts. Ditto on the salt. The TRD Spouse, having little to no diet concerns, had what looked like a half a paint can (literally) stuffed with lobster, corn, potatoes. He loved it.

For dessert, TRD Spouse and guest both had the salted caramel rice crispy treat with chocolate mousse and mascarpone ice cream. I tasted the latter and could easily have eaten a sizeable bowl of that.

Instead, I opted for the fresh fruit plate. It is my patriotic duty to order fresh fruit, given how few restaurants are thoughtful enough to include it on the dessert menu. What arrived at the table was a beautiful mosaic of slightly ripe watermelon but perfectly ripe strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and pineapple.

Despite drinking multiple glasses of water and ice tea, I left the restaurant with that salty taste for something -- anything -- and therefore settled into my seat at the theater with a box of milk duds. And then just before turning in for the night, I had some cookies from the deli across the street.

So bottom line on Pier 9 is: go but ask the chef to go easy on the salt.

TRD's Spouse and the PR

Not too long after The Restaurant Dieter took up with his spouse, he heard the phrase "PR" applied to restaurants. Specifically, it stood for "personal record" -- how much was spent per person on expensive, high-end meals.We were at a nice restaurant with TRD Spouse's family when the phrase came up.

This was a sign of the danger to come, of course. I grew up in more modest surroundings. There wasn't much point in dwelling on a PR at Symack's restaurant in suburban Detroit. It was one of two restaurants we went to when I was growing up, and then only occasionally. Moreover, it met the criteria that rendered restaurants acceptable or not in my family: the napkins did not "stand up." Once on a vacation with the family my mother laid down the law: A cloth napkin folded into a triangle sitting on the table was a sure sign that it was too rich for our blood. Symack's was all paper placemats and napkins.

I do have fond memories of the food itself, though, which truth be told indicates my adult diet dilemma isn't TRD Spouse's fault. Even if we ate cheaply, we didn't eat healthily. I craved the triple-decker Dinty Moore sandwich, whose chief sins were white bread, corned beef and Russian dressing. And the salad dressing -- a big gob of Thousand Island Dressing topped with what seemed like 1/4 cup of blue cheese crumbles -- still makes my mouth water. As an adult, I've savored it on an iceberg wedge at The Palm.

Classy, no?

The other restaurant was called the Sweden House. What was a nice Sicilian family like ours doing at a place with faux-Scandanavian overtones? Bellying up to the buffet and I do mean bellying. It was an all-you-can eat smorgasbord, where you could -- and we did -- pile the fried shrimp on repeatedly.

So I introduce you to TRD Spouse's dining predilection with no malice. It's certainly not his fault that I've battled weight nearly all my life. And even if he weren't finding new high-end restaurants to try, I'm still   occasionally guilty of finding my own smorgasbords to belly up to.

My Fat Greek Wedding

Still, he provides a convenient foil in nearly all ways. A good way to think about it is that I and my family represent Toula from "My Fat Greek Wedding." And he is Ian, so white bread he's ...Canadian. And my family is securely working class, while his his grandad was the chairman of the local bank. His family is The New Yorker, and mine is Life magazine.

So 16 years ago, we melded the world of restaurant PRs with "I'd like a clean plate for some more fried shrimp, please." It's been blissful, but it's been a study in dining out contrast.

It's led us to order a Reuben sandwich for -- 2? 3? all of Manhattan? -- at The Carnegie Deli in New York, where I could eat every day if not properly restrained. And it's led us to restaurants such as Alinea in Chicago. The link to that restaurant's website should tell you just how swank the place is. See if you can figure out what to click on.

(By the way, for the Toulas among us, Alinea is pronounced "ah-LYNNE-ee--ah." I tend to forget and refer to it as "al-li-NAY-uh" because it sounds ever so more chic.)

Alinea is the creation of Grant Achatz, who is listed on the restaurant's website as a partner on "the creative team," otherwise known as the chef. He's one of the nation's high priests of molecular gastronomy, which means that the kitchen has thrown mere pots and pans out the window in favor of glass beakers and liquid nitrogen. He gets extra credit in this elite world because he has lost his sense of taste. I'm not kidding. I can't think of a better reason for a restaurant snob like TRD Spouse to want to go there. So go there we did.

There is no menu from which to choose at a restaurant like this. A meal is a symphony of chef derring-do where the menu is set in advance and only the number of courses varies. Each table must select the same meal plan, however. TRD Spouse once did the "24 course chef's tour" with a group from work and they didn't even have to leave Chicago.

This is a restaurant where the napkins not only stand up, they also are folded, re-folded and/or replaced every time you leave the table.

On our visit, a parade of servers emerged from the kitchen dispensing tiny bites of food and extensive instructions. To get the proper effect, the server advised that we need to toss back -- in a single gulp -- the contents of the shot glass, for inside was a celery broth and a frozen horseradish ball filled with apple juice. Maybe it was apple essence; juice sounds a little too hoi polloi. We were advised that the pillows on which one dish was set would gradually deflate, releasing the juniper scented air and imparting a lovely flavor profile (profile? which, exactly, is what?) to the food itself. No dish could simply be eaten.

Of course, figuring Weight Watchers points on a meal like this is pointless. In 16 years, we've had a great many meals like this. One thing I'll say for them is: the portions are tiny and while there is undoubtedly diet damage, the intense flavors are likely to come from mad scientist preparations or expensive ingredients -- not the fat, salt and sugar that dominate inexpensive restaurant meals. I mean, how many calories could that juniper air have been?

Still, the meal left me wondering, and therefore perfectly entitled to be a jerk and ask the server when the coffee arrived: "Is there a particular way we're supposed to consume this?"

Now where can I go find a good friend shrimp buffet?

Pay More? Why is that Even A Question?

Here's a shocker: A survey by a well-known marketing consultant has determined that folks are not willing to pay more at restaurants in order to eat healthier.

The report, by NPD Group, said 70 percent of respondents felt that way. The report was featured in an edition of Nation's Restaurant News, a major trade publication.

What's shocking is that no one appeared to question the logic and ask: Why should those of us who want to eat healthy at a restaurant pay more?

So the owner can increase profits? So the restaurant can run another deal on Groupon and use our money to make up the difference.

Healthy eaters already are paying more at most restaurants, and we are none too happy about it. When the sandwich comes with fries and there isn't a substitute, we say "leave them off the plate" and tough it. When we can get substitutions, the waiter is quick to make sure we understand that we're deviating from the norm and will pay the price.

How many times have we heard this one? "I'll have to charge you extra for it, sir."

I'm thinking it might be worth a little survey of our own. You know, something I invite you to share with NPD Group, Nation's Restaurant News and the National Restaurant Association.

Pay more? Don't you dare. We're sick of it already.

Buttercream Frosting and The City

What kind of person would The Restaurant Dieter be if he lived a life of pious eating all the time? A cranky one.

So the joys of a sweet treat now and then cannot be cast aside. That's especially true when in New York. This is where the city magazine recently proclaimed toast as...you guessed it, the newest thing since sliced bread.

I make fun of New York's food obsession here, but the city, one Greenwich Village Bakery and "Sex and the City" launched the cupcake craze. For that I am deeply grateful.

I've been on a warpath against most fine restaurants today because cake has fallen from favor as a dessert option. The menu only has one cake usually -- something chocolate, flourless, intense, gushy -- and then a creme brulee or flan, fruit and pasty or crunch something, ice cream and sorbet, tiramisu and maybe a cheesecake or carrot cake. A wonderful golden layer cake with fresh stawberries and whipped cream or a lovely coconut cake is passe.

So when the eyeglass shop wasn't open yet, I made a beeline to Upper West Side outpost of The Magnolia Bakery, the Greenwich Village institution where those impossibly thin SATC girls bought their cakes.

At the counter, I spied a caramel dripped cupcake and one topped in snowy coconut. I'm partial to red velvet cupcakes, but have not forgiven Magnolia for messin' with the classic recipe and substituting white buttercream frosting for the cream cheese icing. I'd eat your shirt if it had cream cheese icing on it.

Just for the hell of it, I asked the counter girl: "Do you have nutritional information on any of your cupcakes?" She resisted the temptation to call Bellevue and have me committed and said no.

As I sidled up to the checkout, another customer was confessing to the register clerk that she tried a brownie sample because she wouldn't dare eat a cupcake. The box she had was for someone else?

"Oh, it's only 10 calories," she told the woman. And then, seeing the look on my face added, with a laugh, "give or take a hundred."

Well for that nutritional bargain, I figured why not and took a sample myself. Self-delusion is a beautiful thing.

Coconut cupcake and brownie sample

So what was the damage? Finding good information about cupcakes is tough online. A lot of websites will rely on the nutritional labels on a pre-packaged food, such as a Hostess cupcake. But that too is a wonderful exercise in self-deception, according to Dr. Charles Stuart Platkin, who writes as The Diet Detective. According to National Public Radio, Platkin recently determined that my Magnolia treat came in at about 389 calories and nearly 19 grams of fat. Another popular local chain has cupcakes with 780 calories and 36 grams of fat. But a Hostess cupcake is a more modest 181 calories and 6 grams of fat.

And that brownie sample? Weight Watchers teaches that an item the size of your thumb is about 1 ounce.

Using Platkin's estimates and my Weight Watchers Points E-tools, I figure that cupcake cost me 7 daily points out of my 38 daily allotment. And that supposed 10 calorie brownie sample was more like 100 calories. (The sales clerk was right after all!)

I could have mitigated the damage. Today's cupcakes have snowy peaks of frosting that make Everest look small, compared to that perfectly acceptable smear mom used. If a teaspoon of buttercream frosting is about 44 calories and 1 gram of fat, I could have easily scraped a couple of tablespoons off and still enjoyed it.

But I didn't. I ate the cupcake in four bites, my nose earning a requisite dollop of frosting.

So lunch is another turkey sandwich for me.

Dressing on the side? Not so fast buddy.

Let's talk, shall we, about the salad dressing cup? You know, that little plastic, stainless steel or ceramic cup that arrives cradled on the edge of your salad when you have the temerity to ask the waiter, "Can I have the dressing on the side?"

It's a godsend, right? Well, maybe.

In the restaurant trade, this item is apparently known as a sauce cup, a souffle cup or a portion cup. I like the latter term because portion control is what so many of us lack. Our well-intended salads mutate to mock us: "Oh sure, you ordered a salad! But will you LOOK at the high-fat dressing that's on it?" OK, busted.

That's where that little cup comes in. We pick it up, pour it on, smug that we are in control of our cellulite.

Ah, if it were only that simple. These little gems come in a variety of shapes, sizes and materials. Search "plastic portion cup" in Google and see what you get. It's confusing.

I found black ones, white ones, clear ones, polystyrene ones, stainless steel ones and ceramic ones. I found them in sizes ranging from 3/4 ounces to 3 1/4 ounces. The size I regarded as the most common turned out to contain 2 ounces in plastic but 2.5 ounces in stainless steel. But they looked the same to me.

Plus, that 2-2.5 ounce cup isn't what you want anyway. Look on the side of that dressing bottle, my friend: the nutritional information calls for a 2 tablespoon serving -- which is 1 ounce.

That's a double portion pointed right at your hips.

Defend yourself. Ask for a tablespoon and drip it on gingerly. It may not be as accurate as the tablespoon measure in your kitchen, but it's also unlikely to be a double shot.

Oh, and if the dressing comes in one of those little silver gravy boats, run. Immediately.

The Whole Paycheck Salad

Whole Foods, I come today to praise you. Mostly.

But I will give you some grief because I can't think of a better corporate example of the studies concluding that healthy food costs more. Once only the rich could afford to be fat; nowadays only the rich can afford to be thin.

Today I needed a salad chock full of fresh ingredients. Where better to get one than Whole Foods? The company's salad bars are great. They almost always have three types of greens, plus lots of items you won't find everywhere: plant-rich proteins like tofu and edamame; shredded radish; green, red and yellow bell pepper; carrot; beet; broccoli and cauliflower. There are prepared salads using kale and great gains such as quinoa and wheatberry. They have a wide variety of dressings, some low in fat, ranging from a balsamic vinaigrette to Asian sesame, miso and Ranch. For protein, there's eggs, mock crab and big chunks of grilled white meat chicken.

Uh, scratch that.

The chicken is where lunch started to cross from whole-some to Whole Paycheck, the company's unflattering nickname.

Turkey chunks: real food?

The salad bar didn't have any chicken; just some perfectly rectangular chunks of deli turkey. Those chunks never look appealing.

So I asked an employee at the deli counter if they might be putting some chicken out. After checking in the back, the employee said said the kitchen was all out. But the employee offered to chop up one of the breasts in the deli case. Great.

Then the employee put it in a deli box and weighed it and added the sales sticker.

"How much is that chicken?" I asked.

"$12.99 a pound," the employee said.

"And how much is the salad bar?"

"$7.99 a pound," the employee said sheepishly. "It's different chicken. The salad bar chicken comes from the rotisserie."

"So it's $5 better a pound chicken?"

Recognizing how ridiculous that sounded, the employee opened the deli box, dumped the chicken on my salad and threw the box away.

"Yeah," the employee said, "even I sometimes can't afford to buy food here."

So in the end I paid $11.81 for the salad. Count me virtuous and lucky, but still twelve bucks poorer.

Picture this: 20 best restaurant foods? Not.

The folks over at Eat This, Not That have done a great job at making better choices easy to understand with their highly visual style. I've paged through their books many times and enjoyed their simplicity.

On their website, they're running an interesting series on the 20 Best Restaurant Foods in America. I didn't gasp over the list. It covered chain restaurants, and as I've mentioned before, they tend to be high in fat, sodium and sugar.

The low-end was represented by Starbucks, with "the best coffee shop breakfast" of oatmeal. What shocked me was the high end: "the best appetizer" of ahi tuna at Outback Steakhouse. Are you ready for this? It clocked in at 325 calories, with 21 grams fat and a whopping 1,351 in sodium. With the rest of your meal yet to go.

The USDA's Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010 says about half the population should limit daily sodium intake to 2,300 milligrams. The other half should reduce intake to 1,500 milligrams. The latter half includes children; people 51 and older; African Americans; and those who have hypertension, diabetes or chronic kidney disease.

If you're trying to maintain or lose weight, all that salty flavor only makes you want more.

Relatively speaking, Eat This, Not That has pointed out some lesser evils among some chains.

But the fact is, we can do better and should.

Required reading: 'The End of Overeating'

Dr. David A. Kessler's "The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite" should be required reading for anybody who's waged a battle with weight.

I've lent this 2009 book out often that I no longer have my copy. I've given it to complete strangers in my weekly Weight Watchers meetings, because I believe so strongly in its message.

Here's the gist: It's not you. Salt, sugar and fat are highly addictive -- and the combination much more so. I can't cite the details off the top of my head, but the book is chock full of research citations and anecdotes from scientific studies. I tell friends they all add up to the same thing: A perfectly well fed mouse gets a taste of something salty or sweet, and runs through the electric fence until he's dead to get more.

I know this well. A day of good behavior on the Weight Watchers plan can go out the window after a couple of tortilla chips. Spurred on by that craving for more salt and fat, two chips becomes seven. And seven becomes a whole basket.

Kessler was appointed commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration by President George H.W. Bush and also served in that role under President Bill Clinton. He's a Harvard Med School grad.


Besides the scientific information, the book features comments from anonymous folks who work in product development for major restaurant chains. They strive to make foods super appealing by combining these addictive elements. It's why chicken fingers, coated in a salty batter and then deep fried, are doused in a honey chipolte sauce. The dish hits all three addictive compass points -- fat, salt, sugar.


I'm not pointing a finger at just the chains. Many restaurants go heavy on sugar, salt and fat because people like the taste. Bland food is unsold food; bland restaurants are empty restaurants. Other ingredients that impart flavor to a dish -- say fresh herbs or vegetables at the peak of season -- can be expensive and require more prep time in the kitchen, which also costs. So using fat, salt and sugar is economical.

When I'm vigilant, I turn the basket of chips away. Or don't take any at all. I know that if I slip, it's off to the races for the rest of the day. Sometimes, I can blunt the desire to keep eating by taking a banana, whose potassium counteracts the sodium.


All you can really do is be aware, and that's why you want to read Kessler's book. At least understand that it's not some character flaw on your part.

Thanks Dr. Kessler.

You can follow him @DavidAKesslerMD on Twitter.

The Restaurant Dieter begins

Meet TheRestaurantDieter.

He's 52, soon to be 53. He lost 50 pounds about four years ago and has managed to keep most of it off. His blood sugar is normal, his blood pressure is normal and he can even fit into clothes that are -- occasionally -- age inappropriate. More on that later.

The Restaurant Dieter

He is currently about the size he was in high school, but bigger in the chest and shoulders. What man doesn't love that? He has gained and lost several people in weight over the years. He's boxed up clothing for Goodwill and counted himself lucky when the transition coincided with a change in fashion trends.

Since he discovered kneecap-slamming aerobics in the early 1980s, he's always had some exercise in his life. Currently, it's a combination of elliptical machine, bike, yoga and free weights.

When he lost the 50 pounds four years ago, he had help from Weight Watchers. There is ample research that supports WW's commonsense approach: Most people in our food-centric world cannot lose or maintain weight without some system of counting and accountability. He's found this to be true and not onerous.

Plus he likes the Weight Watchers cookbooks, which have come a long way from the days when they listed tomato juice as a salad dressing.

He reached his WW goal in about a year, and has been consistently over that by about 10 pounds since. He chalks some of it up to the testosterone supplement he's taking. But honestly compels him to disclose that he does not count WW points every day. But he does count as often as he can.

He lives in Atlanta -- a pretty wonderful restaurant town  -- and travels frequently with his spouse, whose hobby is checking off the Best New Chefs from Food & Wine.

He admits he rarely counts WW points when he's visiting New York City, where the "Sex and The City"-inspired cupcake craze has given way to the doughnut craze, courtesy of Doughnut Plant. It is a city where temptation is on every corner. He stays within walking distance of a place that serves carry-out lobster rolls.

Remember this?

When he can summon the internal fortitude to behave himself in the food department, he often finds the choices lacking or uninspiring. It is as if the diet plate of his youth has never disappeared. Moreover, restaurant staffs are either unhelpful or deaf to requests.

For four years, his quest to maintain both lifestyle and weight has posed a challenge.

Along the way, he's learned a lot that he promises to pass on in this space.

Oh, by the way, The Restaurant Dieter is me.