A few weeks ago, Hungry Girl wrote about the Healthy Dining Finder. Just over the weekend I stumbled upon the site myself. Now I have to say that I was really disappointed in the restaurants that I found, but given that they are a new site & they were focused on chain restaurants, the results are acceptable at this point.
The fate and success of this site is now up to us. On the Healthy Dining Finder website, they have a preprinted form that you can hand out to your favorite restaurants. I think this handout does two things: 1) it allows those restaurants who do serve healthy food to register their location on the website, but more importantly, I think it sends a message to any restaurant that we as consumers are starting to demand foods that are good for us from restaurants.
New York City is on the right track too by banning trans-fats from their restaurants. The implication of this ban is HUGE. Not only are we looking at fast food chains, but many restaurants get many of their ingredients from food service providers like Sysco, or US Foodservice. Right now there is a lot of push back from restaurants because it is forced change – it will be more difficult for them. The more we as consumers demand healthy food from our restaurants, and the restaurants listen and in turn provide healthy food for us either by demanding it from their food service providers, or by choosing local ingredients, we will have better quality of foods available to us.
I realize that trans-fat is not the only reason for obesity, however it will be interesting if trans-fats do get banned, what the population will look like.