PHOTOS BY DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Nutritionists Alan Titchenal and Joannie Dobbs hold the Wendy's salad and a Subway sub.

Our fast-food soldiers check out
the latest meals meant to be
healthy, quick and delicious

Food choices keep fat under control
Tasters' notes

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By Betty Shimabukuro
betty@starbulletin.com

How to eat french fries while driving: Tear open ketchup packet (use teeth). Put one fry in mouth. Squirt ketchup into mouth. Chew. Swallow. Repeat.

Star-Bulletin photographer Dennis Oda eats this way, just about every day. He has at least one fast-food burger every day, too, except when he's eating at Taco Bell.

Dennis was the perfect candidate for this week's investigation: Fast Food Your Body Can Live With.

Back story: The Center for Science in the Public Interest has just come out with a list of the best in fast foods, healthwise. These are the people who periodically tell us how bad things like movie popcorn are for us, but this time they've come up with a list of seven fast-food items that are safe to eat.

But are they yummy? Do they satisfy? To answer these questions, we assigned Dennis and another daily fast-food diner, production editor Curt Brandao, to eat off this list of foods for one day. Joining them, for balance of viewpoint, were Joannie Dobbs and Alan Titchenal, the husband-wife nutritionist pair who write our weekly feature, "Health Options".

It was a disruptive culinary experience for all of them.

Now, the point of healthy fast food may escape you. Health/weight conscious eaters of the world could just go somewhere else and leave the burgers and fries to people who don't fear them. But there are reasons for this exercise:

a) During frequent outings with the Happy Meal generation (where food choices are based on which restaurant is giving away the best toy), it's good to know what you as a responsible adult can order.

b) If you're trying to lose weight, but are forced to make an occasional fast-food stop, it's good to know what will do the least harm to your overall diet.

c) If you are like Dennis and Curt, our burger-buddies, it's good to know what you could try as an alternative should you want to eat a bit healthier without throwing your body into shock.

The point, said Jayne Hurley, senior nutritionist for the Center for Science: "You can go to a fast-food restaurant and not ruin your calorie intake for the day."

Besides, she said, "It's important to praise the fast-food industry when they do something really well."

The items on the list were selected based on nutritional information provided by the companies, but they also had to be above the norm in taste and creativity, Hurley said.

"We looked for things that were not only low in saturated fat and calories, we tried to look for items that were unique. For example the McDonald's Fruit 'n' Yogurt Parfait is the first time I've seen really fabulous yogurt and fruit served at a fast-food restaurant."

The center's survey showed continuing improvement in healthy choices at these eateries, she said. "There are still a heck of a lot more burger choices, but at least there's something out there you can eat."

ON THE TABLE Selected by the Center for Science in the Public Interest: Wendy's Mandarin Chicken Salad 480 calories, 26 g fat (2.5 g saturated fat) Burger King's Chicken Whopper Jr. / BK Veggie 350 calories, 14 g fat / 330 calories, 10 g fat Subway's Select 6-inch low-fat subs 311 to 374 calories, 5 to 6 g fat McDonald's Fruit n' Yogurt Parfait 380 calories, 5 g fat (not pictured above)

She'd like to see fast-food restaurants offer more bean dishes as an alternative to meats -- "but that's not going to happen" -- and more variety in vegetables.

The Wendy's Mandarin Chicken Salad reflects that second desire, she said, as it goes beyond "a pile of iceberg lettuce and maybe some shredded carrots," to include mixed greens, oranges, plus nuts and crispy rice noodles. "It's kinda bistro food, not fast food."

A word of warning, under the category of "a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing." The foods on this list are comparatively healthy choices and they are quick and easy to obtain. This does not mean it would be wise to eat strictly off the list as some sort of crash diet plan.

Just for the heck of it, Joannie the nutritionist examined the nutritional balance of a day's worth of these foods. Her breakdown:

>> Menu 1 (The McDonald's parfait, plus a Burger King BK Veggie Burger and a Subway Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki Select Sub) came to just over 1,000 calories, which is way low no matter how big you are. In Food Pyramid terms, the menu includes six bread servings, which is a good amount; 1-1/2 vegetables and two fruits, which is a little low; and does not meet protein or calcium requirements.

>> Menu 2 (the parfait, plus the Wendy's salad and the veggie burger) came to just over 1,440 calories, again fairly low. It provides four bread servings, which is low; 4-1/2 vegetables and three fruit, which is good; and is again low in protein and calcium.

Basically, while these menus do keep the bad things under control (fat and calories), they don't provide enough of the good things -- fiber, calcium and protein. Also, the carbohydrates they offer are 50 percent sugar -- not the preferred complex carbs found in whole grains, brown rice and such.

The good news is, if you were held captive to fast food for a day or two -- imagine yourself, say, on a mainland road trip, confined to brief pit stops off the freeway -- you could eat off this list all day without doing serious damage. If you supplemented the menus with some fresh fruit and veggies (for fiber) and a couple glasses of milk (for calcium and protein), you'd actually be doing well on the nutritional scale.

Our tasters found each individual dish to be satisfying at the moment, with a few exceptions, but when night fell, they were hungry again.

"By the end of the day, I felt like I was low on calories," Alan the nutritionist said. "Since I had a couple bottles of Kona Brewing Co. Pale Ale on hand, I resisted the urge to find something else to eat and instead enjoyed an evening of moderate alcohol consumption, defined as up to two drinks a day for a man. ... I felt a bit more than lightly intoxicated after consuming the beers on my relatively empty stomach."

Said Dennis the photographer: "I had to stop down the street at Jack in the Box and have a chicken sandwich with buttermilk dressing.

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