Restaurant Rules 101: Tips for Eating Out as a Family

by Jorge and Laura Posada

Dining out doesn’t have to be a diet disaster. Here’s how baseball great Jorge Posada and his wife Laura keep their family from over-indulging. From their book, Fit Home Team: The Posada Family Guide to Health, Exercise, and Nutrition the Inexpensive and Simple Way.

We live in a society where families go out for meals at restaurants just as much as, if not more than, they eat at home. Eating out, though endlessly fun, can have negative effects on your family’s nutrition because you don’t always know how your meals are being prepared and what is going in them, and because we tend to order things on menus that are less healthy than the kinds of foods we would make for ourselves at home. But if you know you are the kind of family that will inevitably eat out at restaurants a lot, there are small changes your family can make to help keep your restaurant experiences both clean and healthy. It is your job as parents to make sure your kids are well informed about healthy choices versus unhealthy ones, so that when a menu is handed to them, they are already poised to make the right selection.

It is important to teach kids about the nature of ‘indulgence,’ and the art of balance and moderation when it comes to eating what they like. As much as we want our children to use wisdom and awareness about what they consume, we also want them to enjoy their experience of eating and food, and even revel in some of their favorite tastes and flavors. Eating out is a perfect opportunity to practice this balance as a group, so you should take advantage of these moments to teach everyone about the merits of holding back, alongside the joys of treating oneself.

Here are some basic rules that we like to live by when we go out to eat; we talk about them with our kids, so that the joy of dining out is never taken for granted, and the awareness about food is always present. Let’s take a look.

Restaurant Rules 101

• Avoid anything fried or breaded.
• Avoid eating too much (or any) bread before the meal; we sometimes even tell the waiter not to bring any to the table, which helps keep temptation at bay. Frankly, if you’re about to consume an entire meal, you certainly don’t need to fill up on bread, which is usually white bread anyway. Be warned.
• If you’re going to order appetizers, try to keep them salads and veggies. The last thing you need is a meal on top of another meal.
• Sharing is caring, and we love to use the sharing rule when we go out to eat. Restaurant portions are often huge, especially for kids, so sharing main courses is a practical (and economical) way to not waste food (and money). It’s also a great way to try various things at once.
• Avoid “kiddie menus,” which are usually replete with fried foods like chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks. Instead, make it a game with your kids to identify the healthiest options, even if these happen to be on the grown-up menu, and encourage your children to think like adults when it comes to ordering their food.
• Avoid ordering soft drinks, and instead opt for water all around.
• Avoid adding salt to your meal, as this is typically not something restaurant chefs hold back on in the kitchen.
• Encourage your kids to find the lean protein on the menu, and look for the vegetable sides that they might like.
• Avoid ordering dessert, and instead suggest that you all eat some fruit together when you get home—if anyone even has an appetite by then.

Stop! In the Name of Health: Portion Control
There is an expression that says the eyes are bigger than the stomach. We often eat with our eyes, serving ourselves more than we can actually fit into our stomachs. Our society celebrates abundance, and we, little pigs that we can tend to be, indulge the bad habit by overestimating our own capacities. To keep this weakness in check, something that we like to practice is the “stop when you are full” rule; meaning, actually pause to feel the sensation of a having a full belly, take a few deep breaths, and honestly ask yourself, Am I full? And if the answer is yes, stop eating. Teach your kids to connect with their bodies by encouraging them to develop this healthy awareness, and you will be simultaneously teaching them about the merits of self-control and physical connectedness as well as the adverse effects of gluttony and even greed.

Teach your children that they do not have to eat until their little tummies feel on the brink of exploding. Explain to them that, though many people love to insist, you don’t have to eat everything on your plate. Portions are usually way larger than one human needs to eat in one sitting, so there is nothing wrong with eating only what you need to feel satiated. Another thing you can teach them is the “twenty-minute rule,” which says that you should wait twenty minutes before serving yourself more food, as twenty minutes give the belly a chance to settle in with new food and therefore make it better able to assess if it really wants or needs any more at all.

Here are some basic measurement guidelines, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Children 2 to 3 years old should consume no more than 1,000 calories each day; girls 4 to 8 should consume about 1,200 and boys of the same age 1,400. Girls between 9 and 13 should get about 1,600 calories daily and boys 1,800. Girls 14 to 18 should aim for approximately 1,800 and boys should shoot for around 2,200. For adults, men need about 2,700 calories per day, and women require about 2,000 calories per day. These calories should include:

2 to 5 ounces of lean meat or beans
1 to 2 cups of fruit
1 to 3 cups of vegetables
2 to 7 ounces of whole grains

As member of the Simon & Schuster Affiliate Marketing Program,
we earn commission on sales from links to advertised products/services.