Eat This Not That

There is a police saying that if you want a boring night just bring a ride a long ("I swear I do more than just drive around") but if you want something exciting (read: reportable) then get something to eat.  Of course the more involved the meal the messier the call. Just eating a PB&J its just an accident.  You sit down someplace to eat and its a 3 car pile up with injuries, nobody speaks English and everbody is high on dope. Eating in peace is not guaranteed in this job. No wonder that cops are regularly eating out, particularly fast food.  We can drive a police cruiser, talk on the radio, listen to the 'other' radio, be on the cellphone, read the MDT etc. We want to be able to eat on the run too.

 So we're going to spend some time looking at eating out on duty. In the end I want to give people some basic knowledge to help them make the right choices when they have to eat out, particularly fast food.  This will include actual foods available in Lincoln.  Admittedly, I stole this idea from the editors of Eat This Not That. If you are not familiar, the ETNT books are fantastic resources from Men's Health magazine. The concept essentially is damage control or harm reduction. The books assume you are going to eat pizza, burgers, ice cream etc. so the books focus on swapping out unhealthy foods with their more healthy counterparts. It is as if the authors are saying 'if you are going to eat brownies eat this one instead of this other, more calorie laden version'.

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 I use the words 'more healthy' cautiously though.  Just because a food is listed as a 'eat this' food doesn't mean it's a health food.  As an example ETNT suggests  eating Twinkies are a better choice then Cosmic Brownies. It  saves you 130 calories and reduces the amount of sugar and fat you'd be taking in. This does not make Twinkies a food that you should be eating everyday.

 Restaurants are putting alot more information out there about the nutritional content of their food; either online or in brocures inside. If you eat someplace regularly you should take a look at what you are putting in your body. Despite all the resources and information available to help customers make better choices when eating out there is nothing that can beat preparing your own food and bringing it to work for two main reasons.

 1) You control and know what's going into your food

 2) Eating out is expensive

 Eating out on duty is often a matter of convenience and all of us from time to time are going to have to do it. It's much better to eat out then to starve yourself. But if you can make the healthier choice a couple a times week you'll probably be surprised how leaned out you can get. Stay tuned for more on your favorite restaurants.


  

Why do I think this is not an American magzine at all???