Ah, breakfast time: morning paper sitting on the coffee table, steaming plate of whole wheat French toast on the breakfast bar and relaxed, easy conversation with your kids before they go happily marching off to school. Sound too good to be true?
It is.
These days it’s more like a brown-bagged breakfast burrito in the car, a quick news update on the radio and a “have a nice day” text message between red lights. But that doesn’t mean you have to settle for quasi-nutritious food fodder; whether rushing through the drive-through or dropping by for a power brunch it’s good to know you have options on the road.
Here are some nutritious menu items at your nearest fast food chains that are worth a second glance:
1) Cosi’s Spinach Florentine Breakfast Wrap: fluffy omelet, iron-rich spinach and warm tortilla. No plate, no fork, no problem.
2) Starbucks’ Protein Artisan Snack Plate has it all: juicy grapes and apple wedges, boiled egg and cheese slices, and a multi-grain muesli roll with peanut butter spread. All that and fresh coffee, too.
3) Jamba Juice’s Ideal Meal menu offers a complete breakfast in one batch of vitamin-rich goodness; the Berry Topper is a pureed concoction of strawberries, non-fat yogurt and blueberries, sprinkled with organic pumpkin flaxseed granola and banana slices.
4) Going to Denny’s? Nix the artery-clogging bacon plate in lieu of some scrambled egg whites, chicken sausage and wheat pancakes with sugarless syrup.
5) Surprisingly, McDonald’s breakfast menu features some healthy fast food breakfast options. Their Fruit and Maple Oatmeal has 290 calories, only 4.5 grams of fat and comes topped with fiber-rich raisins, cranberries and chopped red and green apples. And no, you don’t get fries with that.
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