Healthy Eating Healthy - Mexican Style!

More and more restaurants these days are catering to the nutritional savvy crowd. From pizza houses offering up thin crust pizzas with reduced cheese content to Chinese restaurants making more of their dishes include stir-fried vegetables made with little or no vegetable oil, Mexican restaurants are also offering fare that any dieter can easily take advantage off.

The first thing to remember is that you can always request slight alterations made to your dish. Most restaurants are now willing to accommodate to special requests. A simple substitution of sour cream for instance with guacamole may not necessarily cut the calories all that greatly but will give you more healthy fats rather than saturated ones.

When it comes to making the actual dish selections, it helps to learn what your options are. If you are in the mood to order tacos or burritos, choose a soft shell over the hard. The hard shell tortilla's are usually fried in oil so this will make them higher in fat content. One thing to be particularly on the lookout for is tacos that come with both a hard and soft shell, as this will greatly increase the calorie content of your meal.

As a starter, you might even decide to request a soft tortilla to eat with your salsa rather than the hard taco chips as well. If the particular restaurant you are eating at offers any type of stir-fried vegetables you could also order a side of those, place them in the soft tortilla along with a scoop of salsa and have a nice, light meal in itself.

Always look at the appetizer menu for potential meal options as often times these are big enough to satisfy your hunger. Ordering off the actual dinner menu usually means extra large portions that will contribute to an extra large waistline.

If you are a bean fan, try and stick with black bean dishes over refried beans. Not only are black beans low in fat but they are also high in protein and a good source of dietary fibre.

In general, you should be on the lookout for the cheese content of dishes. Most meals at Mexican restaurants will include some form of cheese so it may be best to ask right away for the amount to be reduced. Cheese in itself is relatively healthy and a good source of calcium, however this is for a small serving size which you are not likely getting in a restaurant. Their meals will have more than what you need and while you will get the protein and calcium the cheese contains, the high amount will significantly contribute to your saturated fat intake.

Finally, a salad is usually a pretty safe option - ordering the sour cream on the side of course. Additionally, if it is served in a shell bowl you should leave the shell on the plate. Again the shell has been fried and will add numerous fat and carbohydrate calories to your meal. On the other hand, you can consume as much salsa, either with your salad or with any other dishes, as you like so definitely take advantage of this to help flavour your food.

Eating out at a Mexican restaurant definitely does not have to mean going off your diet however you do need to be consciously aware of what you are ordering.