This article about the Fast Food Diet illustrates a point I've made before: Fast Food, because they publish information about the dietary contents for each thing they make, is better for your diet than regular restaurants. At regular restaurants, you never know when they've dumped an entire stick of butter into that pasta dish, or those mashed potatoes. Or creme fraiche, etc. In many cases, the number of calories a meal at a restaurant has is twice what you may think it is. This is part of the energy density problem.

But, at least at fast food places, you can look at the dietary information and choose foods that meet the correct calorie requirements. When we were in Japan a couple years back, a lot of restaurants had the calorie counts for each dish on the menu (including Dennys). There has been some push in this country to require that as well, though of course the various restaurant associations all cry foul at the thought.