Before You Order ‘Healthy’ Fast Food, Read This.

When dining out, more and more folks are looking for sustainable choices. Fast food restaurants have picked up on this growing demand and are now offering all kinds of environmentally-friendly options including organic vegetables, grass-fed beef and naturally-raised pork. Better yet, many of them do so for a reasonable cost. But does an emphasis on agricultural practices translate to healthier food? Let’s take a look at some popular restaurants to find out.

At Chipotle Mexican Grill, you can fill your taco or burrito with naturally-raised pork, beef or chicken. Chipotle’s website defines “naturally-raised” animals as those that are “raised in a humane way, fed a vegetarian diet, never given hormones, and allowed to display their natural tendencies.” Also, a majority of their cheese and sour cream is sourced from pasture-raised cows. According to Chipotle’s website, this means that “cows have daily access to outdoor pastures, are never given added hormones, and are fed an all vegetarian, plant-based diet.”

But what does this mean for your health and waistline? Take a burrito bowl, fill it with chicken, brown rice, black beans, fresh tomato salsa, cheese and guacamole and you’ve got a meal with 850 calories, 44.5 grams of total fat, 11.5 grams of saturated fat and 1510 milligrams of sodium. That’s 42.5 percent of a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet and 66 percent of the recommended daily allowance of sodium. Based on the nutrition facts alone, that bowl is not exactly considered a healthy choice.

Another tasty fast food chain found on the East coast and in Texas is Elevation Burger. The restaurant prides itself on offering sustainably-prepared foods that are “better for you and the environment.” Elevation Burger offers burgers made from 100 percent organic grass-fed beef. It also has two vegetarian patties on the menu — one vegan and one with cheese. Still, if you order the signature burger — served with caramelized onions, cheese and Elevation Sauce — you’re downing 625 calories. (And that’s without side fries or a beverage.)

Bareburger is another fast food chain with 23 locations from Ohio to New York to Toronto. While the chain offers traditional beef, turkey and chicken burgers, it also sells off the beaten path choices such as lamb, ostrich, bison, elk and wild boar. The restaurant prides itself on serving meats that are organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised and antibiotic-free. The Bareburger website boasts that its outposts offer fair-trade food with no GMOs and no pesticides. But selections here can also be high in calories and sodium. An elk burger, for example, comes with Amish blue cheese, stout onions and tomato jam on a sprout bun, adding up to 660 calories, 25 grams of total fat, 8 grams of saturated fat and 1,440 milligrams of sodium. That’s 63 percent of the recommended daily allowance of sodium — again, without any sides or beverages.

All this to say, although agricultural practices are important, there’s more to determining if a meal is healthy. According to the latest Dietary Guidelines Committee Report, Americans eat too much saturated fat, with 90 percent of men and women in all age groups exceeding the recommended daily limits of solid fats. The report pinpointed sodium as another nutrient we tend to go too wild with. Although the food industry has made great strides in producing packaged foods like soup with less sodium, fast food joints still tend to serve meals that are laden with the salty stuff.

So what’s a fast food lover to do? While the fact that more fast food restaurants are offering environmentally-friendly choices is good news, a food’s nutrition profile must also be taken into consideration when determining if it’s healthier. The two go hand in hand. So the next time you choose to dine out, check the nutrition facts so you can get the best of both worlds.

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Before You Order ‘Healthy’ Fast Food, Read This. originally appeared on usnews.com

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