Fresh Choice is an all-you-can-eat salad and soup chain restaurant that also has pasta, potatoes, rice, bakery items and desserts. It is comparable to a lot of the other chains in different parts of the country, like Tomatoes or Zoopas. I often go there when I am craving a big meal but don’t want to load up on calories and unhealthy foods.
Today, after eating a satisfying lunch at Fresh Choice, I went home and checked out their web site that has newly added nutritional information. I held my breath because, although I thought I’d been making good choices (avoid full-fat dressings, cream-based soups etc…) you never know where the hidden calories might lurk. I wondered if I would regret that innocent-looking corn muffin.
There were a few surprises, but all in all, you can definitely eat healthy at Fresh Choice, as long as you avoid a few pitfalls, and practice a little restraint. What I usually do is load up on the greens, veggies and mushrooms from their great selection and top it off with a tablespoon or so of one of their non-fat dressings. My favorite it the honey mustard, with 50 calories for 2 tablespoons. They have a good selection of other no-fat dressings, also, with the tasty pesto ranch a lean 30 calories per 2 tablespoons.
So the salad part is easy if you avoid the pre-prepared oil-heavy salads and mayonnaise-based potato and macaroni salads. It’s the side dishes that are the question.
I figured the worst thing on my plate was the corn muffin. Turns out it had 190 calories, one of the healthier muffins, but still more calories than I want to use up on a bread item. The ‘German chocolate muffin has a hefty 288 calories, and most of the fruit muffins are around 250. Next time I will opt for the California Fresh Veggie pizza slice at 138 calories, or the Garlic Herb Foccacia at 121 calories.
At the salad bar, I put a new item, a slice of a Chipotle Chicken Wrap on my plate. It looked small and healthy enough, but turned out to be the worst thing I chose at 259 calories. I was really glad I only ate half of it. It was tasty, but I suspected a mayonnaise-based dressing.
I skipped the soup, but found out you can go right or wrong pretty drastically here. The Baked Potato Soup weighs in at a hefty 306 calories for 1 cup, as opposed to the Hearty Vegetable at 43 calories per cup (you could eat a whole gallon!) and the Ginger Carrot at 69 calories per cup. The cream-based soups aren’t as bad as I imagined, with Cream of Broccoli at a reasonable 173 per cup, but the Cream of Asparagus at 270 per cup.
I always like something sweet after a meal, and I usually go for the soft-serve frozen yogurt because the sign says it’s fat-free. But guilt-free? Well, not the way I like it–with caramel sauce and toasted coconut (food of the gods, if you ask me)–but by itself, it has 100 calories per half cup.
So have a little dessert if you haven’t blown your day’s allotment on two chocolate muffins, but even if you have, you can still have some sugar-free gelatin with only 10 calories per half cup and some 25-calorie whipped topping.
All in all, Fresh Choice really is a good choice with some smart choices and knowledge of the product.