Book Excerpt: 'Fast Food Fix: 75+ Amazing Recipe Makeovers of Your Fast Food Restaurant Favorites'

April 27, 2006— -- Americans love fast food, but unfortunately, fast food is one of the reasons that as a nation, we are getting fatter and fatter. To satisfy the fast-food cravings of those who are trying to lose weight, Los Angeles-based food writer, chef and caterer, Devin Alexander compiled her healthy alternatives to fast-food favorites in her new book, "Fast Food Fix: 75+ Amazing Recipe Makeovers of Your Fast Food Restaurant Favorites."

Read an excerpt below.

Chapter 1

Get Your Fast food fix

I consider myself a fast food admirer. I love the way fast food tastes, and I admire the folks who've spent countless hours creating the irresistible flavor combinations that we Americans can't wait to find in drive-thrus. Actually, I consider these people artists of sorts, and I, for one, really appreciate their work.

Fast food had been a regular part of my diet for most of my teenage years. However, when I stopped eating it, I lost 25 pounds. When I kept it out of my diet and made a few other changes, I lost another 25. In recent years, I've heard many stories similar to mine. Meanwhile, movie hits like Super Size Me advise us that eating a steady diet of fast food might cause maladies from sluggishness to liver failure. Bestsellers like Fast Food Nation warn us that feces might be found in our meat supply. So we Americans slowly but surely started to wonder more and more about the hazards of eating fast food. But just as we were starting to realize that it might be a good idea to steer our cars a bit more frequently to grocery stores instead of through drive-thrus, the fast food chains responded. They started offering healthier options, which has been great. But one major problem remains: cravings. When plagued with visions of a Big Mac, will a McSalad do the trick? When you're dying for a Cinnabon, will an apple hit the spot? Probably not. And when we're told we "can't" or "shouldn't," we want something even more-after all, it's human nature.

That's where this book comes in. It gives you options. It's a "go ahead, have it your way-really" cookbook. And "have it your way" every day if you want. Each of the fast food favorites in this book is a solution for satisfying the most-common fast food cravings. I'm hoping that we as a nation will be able to turn our backs on supersizing but will still get our Fast Food Fix with ingredients we select ourselves in the portions that our bodies need.

Fast Food Fix Promises

To give you the best creations I possibly could, I decided to make some promises about the recipes before I wrote another word of this book.

1. The serving size of every recipe contained in this book is at least as big as the original version, but it will contain considerably fewer grams of fat, calories, and chemicals.

I did my best in every case to buy three of each item from different locations of each chain. I broke down the recipes by first weighing and measuring each item and then its component parts on two scales. I re-created them by looking at the weights provided by the nutritional data sheets in conjunction with the serving sizes that were in front of me. Then, after I tested my versions, I pur-chased a final sample (when at all possible) to make sure my versions looked as large and weighed as much as the originals (in many cases, mine are significantly larger).

2. The recipes will use only common ingredients and employ basic cooking techniques with instructions as to how to cook the food properly to yield optimum results.

Though I can't promise that every item called for will be available wherever you shop, I did make sure key ingredients were available nationwide. In a few cases, it makes sense that it was harder to find ingredients for regional recipes outside the local area-grocery stores tend to stock popular, regional items. In the end, I was happy to learn that though 96% lean ground beef isn't sold everywhere, I found it in at least one major grocery store in each city I visited, and it was in all Trader Joe's stores and even in Wal-Mart Supercenters.

3. If the inspiring fast food item contains beef, the Fast Food Fix version will also contain beef-no substituting "girly veggies" for "manly beef."

There isn't even the slightest hint of a disclaimer here. I feel strongly about this promise and stuck to it throughout. I don't even believe in substituting turkey bacon for bacon, so I didn't do it.

I do not purport or intend to "trick" anyone into believing he or she is eating "the real thing." The Fast Food Fix versions model the same basic ingredients, flavors, textures, and feel as the favorites they re-create, but they're guilt-free.

It's also worth pointing out that in most cases, I've written recipes for single servings. My logic for this is pretty simple: These are recipes to help you satisfy real fast food cravings, so if you are the only one in the house hankering for a chili burger, you can easily fix it for yourself. This strategy also let me re-create the most exact flavors possible. However, in the interest of convenience, I've also made sure that all sauces yield enough for four servings (most of them store very well). By all means, if you are cooking for more than one person, feel free to multiply the recipes as necessary.

Whose Favorites?

You may have perused the Contents and wondered why the Wendy's Single isn't included but Back Yard Burgers' Black Jack Burger is. Or you may wonder why Dunkin' Donuts is and Krispy Kreme isn't. Rest assured, the task of compiling the list was a process that involved a wide range of people.

A group of colleagues and friends and I started by listing what we considered to be the most popular fast food dishes available. I then broke them down by type and researched their nutritional values. Some fell off the list because the makeovers just wouldn't save enough fat or calories to make it worthwhile to spend the time and energy re-creating them. For instance, Boston Market used to have corn bread that resembled mini-loaves. Over the past couple of years, they reformulated their corn bread to have a smaller size and a different shape. The new, smaller version has only 120 calories and 3.5 grams of fat. Even if I were to cut the fat by 75 percent, you'd be saving only about 2.5 grams. Meanwhile, also on our list was Dunkin' Donuts Corn Muffins, which one of my friends swears by. I was able to eliminate 153 calories and 15 grams of fat from that jumbo muffin and found that opting for a standard-size muffin will set you back only about 2 grams of fat per muffin. Since the flavors are similar, it was a no-brainer. I skipped Boston Market's version and included the muffin from Dunkin' Donuts.

Other items fell off the list because I just didn't feel I could duplicate them as similarly as I would have liked. Unfortunately, I worked on at least 30 recipes that never saw these pages. For instance, though the Wendy's Single is extremely popular, it doesn't have a sauce or any truly identifying characteristic other than its square shape that could make the lighter version come to life. The Big Mac, on the other hand, was a slam dunk as soon as I was able to perfect the sauce.

Others got bumped, so to speak, because they were too similar. I did my best to provide a diverse menu, of sorts. If you're a big bacon fan, you'll find a burger you love. There are thin fries, curly fries, crinkle fries, Cajun fries, etc., which I found preferable to making a new version of the regular straight-cut fries I found in almost every restaurant I visited.

The pizzas are heavy on meat toppings because the veggie toppings don't add or subtract much. If you'd prefer a mushroom onion pizza, you can skip all of the toppings on the pizza from your favorite fast food pizza restaurant and follow the directions for the dough, sauce, and cheese, then top it with mushrooms and onions to your heart's content.

But Who Really Has the Time to Make Their Own Fast Food?