Healthy Restaurant Review: Panera Bread

It's hard to eat healthy all the time, and it's even harder to cook what you know would be healthy.  Since I am always on the lookout for healthy food, I am here to share my suggestions.  One place markets itself as a "healthier" restaurant: Panera Bread, and the question remains, so is it really healthier?

Panera has an interesting history; it comes from the birth of Au Bon Pain and the acquisition of St. Louis Bread Company.  Early in the company's growth, the co-founder decided to put all his eggs in the Panera basket, sold off the Au Bon Pain business units, and thereby re-branded and grew the old St. Louis Bread assets into Panera Bread.   Sort of a complicated series of events, but I guess that is what entrepreneurial ventures are about: becoming something out of nothing (or from relative little).

So, what is healthy at Panera?  Forget their entire bakery selection.  Although made from higher quality ingredients than of that available at a local, regional chain grocery store (i.e., Safeway, Jewel, Dominick's), they are almost all points of high intake of sugar, flour, butter, etc.  However, referring back to one of my previous posts Croissants are Better than You Think?, if it is between a blueberry muffin or a plain croissant, go for the croissant - more air, less fat and sugar.  The bread section will not be that nutritious either.  And, please make no mistake that eating the bread bowl is like eating a piece of cake - the body basically treats the refined flour as sugar, going straight to your waistline.

Enough about what not to eat.  Here's what I would suggest: do a pick two.  Pair the Garden Vegetable Soup with Pesto with the Asian Sesame Chicken salad.  This garden vegetable soup is warm on a cold day and helps if you are battling a cold.  Vegetables include yellow wax beans, zucchini, onions, Swiss chard, cauliflower, etc.  And, also contains barley!  The only drawback is that the soup is still relatively high in sodium (1240 mg of sodium per serving), but still not as high in sodium as some of the other Panera soups offered.

I like to pair this soup with the Asian Sesame Chicken salad with dressing on the side, because although the salad doesn't have much to it, it has a nice helping of chicken, a slightly sweet savory dressing that can be used sparingly if you choose, topped with cilantro and almonds, and the sprinkle of sesame seeds are the bomb.  The nutty flavor just explodes!  The vegetables from the soup help the lack thereof in the salad, but another idea that I have done in the past is to ask them to add red peppers and tomatoes.  These are at an extra charge, but if you go solo salad, I think it is worth it.