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If You Have to Grab Breakfast at a Fast-Food, Here Are Your Healthiest Choices"It can be tricky to find a breakfast item that's reasonable in calories, fat, sodium, and sugars while high in valuable nutrients, especially fiber—and that also tastes good." -Amy Keating (Washington, DC)— [ConsumerReports.org] One piece of dietary wisdom that has stood the test of time: Breakfast is the most important meal of your day. (Photo: via Consumer Reports) "Research shows that people who eat breakfast tend to have a healthier body mass index (the relationship between your height and weight) and lower rates of obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes than people who skip it," says Marie-Pierre St-Onge, Ph.D., associate professor of nutritional medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Eating a morning meal is also linked with improved cognitive function. But home-cooked breakfasts are increasingly a thing of the past—and even cold-cereal sales are getting soggy. "As people are pressed for time, they want faster ways to get their breakfast fix," says Amanda Topper, associate director of food service research at market research firm Mintel. According to market research firm NPD Group, the number of Americans eating breakfast outside the home was up 5 percent in 2016 over 2015, continuing a steady upward trend. NPD estimates that we now eat roughly one-third of our breakfasts at fast-food and coffee chains. Are we sacrificing healthfulness for speed and convenience? Potentially. "It can be tricky to find a breakfast item that's reasonable in calories, fat, sodium, and sugars while high in valuable nutrients, especially fiber—and that also tastes good," says Amy Keating, R.D., a Consumer Reports nutritionist. That's why she and the rest of CR's food testing team scrutinized offerings at six popular chains to help you make smart choices. Happily, we found some comparatively healthy and tasty options. What's on the Menu? We looked at six chains—Au Bon Pain, Dunkin' Donuts, Jamba Juice, McDonald's, Panera Bread, and Starbucks—that Antonella Pomilla, senior market analyst at CR, says "represent examples of national fast-food and fast-casual restaurants, smoothie chains, and coffee shops you're likely to find in strip malls or at an airport." From there, our dietitians scanned the calories, fat, saturated fat, sodium, sugars, and fiber content. "We then fully tested only items that had some baseline possibility of being nutritious," Keating says. This left 48 options to try—only a fraction of the total items available. To be recommended, an item had to receive at least a Very Good rating for nutrition and taste. Overall, Panera Bread fared best, with five recommended items. Starbucks landed four recommendations, and Au Bon Pain and Jamba Juice had three each. Finding a healthy option was more difficult at Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's. Both chains scored high marks for taste, but none of their menu items met our nutritional criteria for a recommendation. The offerings break out into four categories:
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