Thai Food... Healthy Choices???

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  • Alsison
    Alsison Posts: 609 Member
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    I have never had Thai food that wasn't healthy. Do you mean low calorie?

    Yes I do mean low calorie. The place close to my work seems to have nice smaller lunch portions and they have the option to go with brown rice. It is just hard to log as I have no idea what the calories would be...

    Thanks for all the great advice.

    Cheers,

    Alsison
  • Kotuliak
    Kotuliak Posts: 259 Member
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    Most calories in Thai food are in the curries, and they come from the coconut milk. That includes red, yellow, green, panaeng, and masaman curries, as well as Tom Khaa Gai soup. All of them, by the way, are excellent and very tasty dishes.

    Among the good low calorie choices would be fresh spring roll (i.e. not fried), green papaya salad (som tam), beef salad (yam nuea), laab (a meal made with minced meet of any variety, e.g. pork, chicken), and Tom Yum Goong.

    Pat Thai is made of rice noodles and sweet sauce but not much oil. Thai style fish would be a good choice but is not common at the Thai restaurants in the Western world.

    Sticky rice is delicious beyond words but again, it is much higher in calories than regular rice and few Westerners know how to prepare it right.

    Personally, I'd rather save other calories to make sure that I can have a nice tasty Thai meal.
  • amberaz
    amberaz Posts: 328 Member
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    IF I am looking to keep calories low, I will get Laarb Gai...but then I usually get fried spring rolls and coconut sticky rice with mango, too. :laugh:
  • fishshark
    fishshark Posts: 1,886 Member
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    i say this anytime one of these threads pop up. If i am going out to eat im gonna eat whatever i want. Im spending money so im going to enjoy myself. If i want plain chicken and veggies il making that at home for 5 bucks.
  • fibonacci11235
    fibonacci11235 Posts: 4 Member
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    I'm half Thai. You want to avoid a lot of the noodle stir fries and a lot of other fried Thai food. Although it is delicious, stuff like pad Thai and drunken noodles can often be cooked in a heavy dose of oil and rice noodle pack a huge amount of calories with little nutrition. Good choices:

    -- as mentioned laarb (Herby salad w lime juice and a bit of ground meat like chicken)

    --- som tam (papaya salad)

    -- any of the grilled meat dishes (limit the amount of sticky rice you eat)

    --tom yum

    --spicy beef salad

    If you can find a place that specializes in Northern style Thai, that's also good. Northern style Thai is probably the healthiest because it uses a ton of herbs and veggies and less noodles, stir fries, and curries.

    You absolutely want to avoid things like Thai tea which are calorie bombs like a large Starbucks frappe. I mean I love all of that stuff too, but it isn't conducive towards meeting your goals if you are in weight loss mode.

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