My wife and I recently spent a holiday week at Disney World in Orlando, going at perhaps the busiest time of the year. But the crowds weren’t worrying me so much as was the food, or more precisely the lack of food that I can eat on my no-salt, no-fat, no-sugar diet.
Would I be able to find any healthy food at Disney? Or at Universal Studios where we also planned to spend considerable time? And what about in Orlando itself, a place I think of as a mecca of fast casual restaurants that have little to nothing healthy on their menus?
The bottom line is that in four and a half days there, I lost four pounds from the combination of little to eat and all the walking we inevitably did. Disney World surprised me with a healthy option for lunch, one of the best I had on the trip in fact. Universal was a total junk food mecca, as were the places we ate in Orlando itself, TGI Friday’s and Carrabba’s, an Italian chain.
Disney was the bright spot, so I’ll start with it. We found a seafood place there, not far from the Disney main street near its Hall of Presidents. It had a salmon lunch item. I think it had some sort of sauce I couldn’t eat on it, but I asked if I could get a plain piece of salmon instead. That necessitated calling a supervisor out to the ordering register. She explained to me the salmon was coated with canola oil so it wouldn’t stick to the grill. I asked to eliminate the oil as well, which they did. It took 20 minutes for my special order, though, meaning I sat and watched others eat their fries and fried foods, all of which I wished I could be eating too.
Still the salmon arrived and was just as I had asked for it, making it the healthiest theme park meal I was to have in the next four days. Bravo Disney for trying. I would love it if you could add more healthy items though so people like me on a restricted diet don’t have to sit around and feel even worse as they watch others eat while we wait for our very plain food.
John
The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal 