Healthy Dining Goes to Jail

The routine would feel familiar to any air traveler.  Take off your shoes, put your purse through the conveyer, and walk through the scanner.  An official stood by, wand in hand, to explore any suspicious beeps.  But at the San Diego Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), I wasn’t allowed to keep my cell phone; it was placed in a locker for the duration of my stay.

Then I was escorted to …….the conference room.  What’s all this about, you wonder?  Healthy Dining was invited to jail.  That’s right…..to present a seminar about healthy restaurant dining to the facility’s employees.  Close to 50 of them showed up to learn about making healthier choices at restaurants.  As the coordinator had explained when issuing the invitation, the prison employees almost always leave the premises for lunch; and the MCC wanted to help them make better choices from a nutritional perspective.  I gave my standard presentation about what constitutes a “Healthy Dining” menu choice at

El Pollo Loco Chicken Tortilla Soup

restaurants (lean proteins, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, etc.) and how tough it can be to do so without knowing the numbers (calories, fat, sodium, etc.).  The group loved hearing about how to use our free restaurant search tool on HealthyDiningFinder.com.

Certainly one of the session’s highlights was the lunch provided by El Pollo Loco.  To demonstrate how great-tasting Healthy Dining can be, El Pollo Loco served up generous portions of their flame-grilled chicken, tortillas, beans, and salad.  Yum!   Just goes to show….it’s no crime to eat healthy, even when it tastes good.