We all know that in order to maintain a healthy diet, avoiding fast food is important. Fast food is almost always higher in sodium, fat and sugar than food you purchase at other types of restaurants or make at home.

Sometimes, either by choice or by necessity, you end up standing in line at a fast food joint, staring at the menu.

All hope is not lost, though. In this week's article, we are going to outline some choices you can make at popular fast food restaurants to limit your intake of all the bad stuff that fast food is loaded with:

- Go for the grilled option if you can. Choosing grilled over crispy will often knock 100 plus calories from your meal.

- Salads are a good choice, but watch out for extras. Cheese, fatty salad dressings and toppings like tortilla chips and crispy chicken will make the calorie count of your salad rival that of some of the worst sandwiches. The Baja salad at Wendy's, for example, comes in at 740 calories and 48g of fat (to compare, the infamous Double Down sandwich from KFC has 540 calories and 32g of fat). You can avoid this by ordering simple salads, or not using the toppings provided. Most fast food places offer fat-free dressing options as well.

- Watch the bread. In a regular fast food sandwich, the bun is often the second biggest source of calories after the meat. Harvey's offers a whole wheat bun that'll knock a few calories off your sandwich and will add some more fibre to your meal. Watch out for the ciabatta bun at McDonalds, offered with the grilled chicken and angus burgers. If you ask for a regular sesame seed bun, you can knock 70 calories, 4g of fat and nearly 100mg of sodium from your meal

- If you're having fries, ask for them without salt. Not only does this ensure you will get fresh fries (fries are usually salted just as they come out of the deep fryer), but it will cut down on the amount of sodium that you'll eat.

- Simplify as much as possible. Can you live without cheese on that burger? How about the special sauce? Identify extra elements in your meal that you can eliminate.

- It isn't all about removing things; you can add things too. If your sandwich doesn't come with lettuce and tomato, ask your server to add them. It will give your meal an extra boost of vitamins, minerals and fibre.

- Taco Bell's food has a bad reputation, but in my opinion, it has some of the healthiest options you can find at a fast food joint. The Fresco menu allows you to replace the sauce and cheese on your taco with a pico de gallo salsa. For example, the fresco style steak taco has only 160 calories and 4.5g of fat — plus it's delicious!

- Look at the options offered for drinks. You can replace soft drinks with milk or juice. It may not save many calories, but at least you can get some vitamins and minerals from it, rather than just sugar and caffeine. You can also ask for water, the original low calorie drink.

Keeping it simple is ultimately the moral of the story here. If you do your research and are vigilant about it, you can easily avoid a great deal of the bad stuff in fast food. Most fast food restaurant websites feature tools that not only allow you to see the nutritional information of their food, but they let you add and subtract individual ingredients so that you can see exactly what you are eating and the amount of calories/sodium/fat in your meal.

Eating at McDonalds or Taco Bell isn't ideal, but with our busy schedules, it is sometimes unavoidable. It doesn't have to be disastrous, though!

Got questions, comments or suggestions? Feel free to e-mail us at foodforthoughtfc@gmail.com