How to Eat Healthy Thai Food While Eating Out

While there are many relatively healthy choices at Thai restaurants, if you don't choose carefully you could wind up consuming way too many calories and too much sodium and saturated fat. Knowing which dishes are healthiest can help you avoid this.

Soups and Starters
For the healthiest Thai dishes, avoid anything deep fried or made with coconut oil to limit fat and calories. Choose fresh spring or summer rolls, such as guay teow lui suan, instead of fried, and choose hot and sour shrimp soup, called tom yam goong or tom yum gung, instead of chicken and coconut milk soup, or tom ka gai. Papaya salad, also called som tum or som tam; the soup called gang jued made with noodles, vegetables, pork and tofu; and satay are also nutritious appetizer choices.

Main Dishes

Ask for stir-fries to be made with chicken broth instead of oil and for sauces to be served on the side to make your Thai main dish healthier. Musamun curry is one of the Thai dishes highest in fat and calories. Gaeng keow wan gai, or chicken curry with eggplant, and gaeng ped gai, or red curry chicken, are also among the less nutritious choices. Shrimp or pork panang are better choices if you want curry. Gai pad mamuang him ma pahn, or cashew chicken, is an even healthier choice. If you like beef, try num tok. Those who prefer shrimp may like goong kra tiem, or garlic shrimp, and those who like chicken may like the chicken with peanut sauce called pra ram long song. Other relatively nutritious choices include pad thai and pepper steak, or nuea pad prik.

Desserts and Drinks
For dessert, fruit ice; the sweet sticky rice called khao newo kaew; or mango with sticky rice, called kao niew ma muang, are among the healthier options. Avoid the pumpkin custard called sang kaya fug tong, the coconut ice cream and gluay kaeg, which are pieces of banana dipped in a coconut batter and fried. When it comes to drinks, stick with something simple, such as water or hot tea. Although Thai iced tea, or cha yen, is tasty enough to have made CNN's list of the "World's 50 Most Delicious Drinks," it is loaded with sugar and calories because of all the sweetened condensed milk it contains.

Making It Healthier at Home
You can make Thai dishes even more nutritious if you make them yourself at home using less meat and more produce and limit the amount of salty and fatty ingredients you add. Using herbs and spices and cooking by stir-frying with broth, grilling or steaming will help you get plenty of flavor without adding too much unhealthy fat. Add a plate of raw sides to help provide extra nutrients, recommends an article on the BBC website. These typically include foods such as bean sprouts, cucumber, apple, spring onions, eggplant and sweet Thai basil.