Yes, Healthful Fast Food Is Possible. But Edible?

Craig Cutler for The New York Times

A tofu taco from Lyfe Kitchen, Buffalo "wings" with ranch dressing from Veggie Grill and Veggie Grill's "cheeseburger" on kale.

When my daughter was a teenager, about a dozen years ago, she went through a vegetarian phase. Back then, the payoff for orthodontist visits was a trip to Taco Bell, where the only thing we could eat were bean burritos and tacos. It wasn't my favorite meal, but the mushy beans in that soft tortilla or crisp shell were kind of soothing, and the sweet "hot" sauce made the experience decent enough. I usually polished off two or three.

I was thinking of those Taco Bell stops during a recent week of travel. I had determined, as a way of avoiding the pitfalls of airport food, to be vegan for the length of the trip. This isn't easy. By the time I got to Terminal C at Dallas/Fort Worth, I couldn't bear another Veggie Delite from Subway, a bad chopped salad on lousy bread. So I wandered up to the Taco Bell Express opposite Gate 14 and optimistically asked the cashier if I could get a bean burrito without cheese or sour cream. He pointed out a corner on the overhead display where the "fresco" menu offered pico de gallo in place of dairy, then upsold me on a multilayered "fresco" bean burrito for about 3 bucks. As he was talking, the customers to my right and left, both fit, suit-wearing people bearing expressions of hunger and resignation, perked up. They weren't aware of the fresco menu, either. One was trying to "eat healthy on the road"; the other copped to "having vegan kids." Like me, they were intrigued by a fast-food burrito with about 350 calories, or less than half as many as a Fiesta Taco Salad bowl. It wasn't bad, either.

Twelve years after the publication of "Fast Food Nation" and nearly as long since Morgan Spurlock almost ate himself to death, our relationship with fast food has changed. We've gone from the whistle-blowing stage to the higher-expectations stage, and some of those expectations are being met. Various states have passed measures to limit the confinement of farm animals. In-N-Out Burger has demonstrated that you don't have to underpay your employees to be profitable. There are dozens of plant-based alternatives to meat, with more on the way; increasingly, they're pretty good.

The fulfillment of these expectations has led to higher ones. My experience at the airport only confirmed what I'd been hearing for years from analysts in the fast-food industry. After the success of companies like Whole Foods, and healthful (or theoretically healthful) brands like Annie's and Kashi, there's now a market for a fast-food chain that's not only healthful itself, but vegetarian-friendly, sustainable and even humane. And, this being fast food: cheap. "It is significant, and I do believe it is coming from consumer desire to have choices and more balance," says Andy Barish, a restaurant analyst at Jefferies LLC, the investment bank. "And it's not just the coasts anymore."

I'm not talking about token gestures, like McDonald's fruit-and-yogurt parfait, whose calories are more than 50 percent sugar. And I don't expect the prices to match those of Taco Bell or McDonald's, where economies of scale and inexpensive ingredients make meals dirt cheap. What I'd like is a place that serves only good options, where you don't have to resist the junk food to order well, and where the food is real — by which I mean dishes that generally contain few ingredients and are recognizable to everyone, not just food technologists. It's a place where something like a black-bean burger piled with vegetables and baked sweet potato fries — and, hell, maybe even a vegan shake — is less than 10 bucks and 800 calories (and way fewer without the shake). If I could order and eat that in 15 minutes, I'd be happy, and I think a lot of others would be, too. You can try my recipes for a fast, low-calorie burger, fries and shake.

In recent years, the fast-food industry has started to heed these new demands. Billions of dollars have been invested in more healthful fast-food options, and the financial incentives justify these expenditures. About half of all the money spent on food in the United States is for meals eaten outside the home. And last year McDonald's earned $5.5 billion in profits on $88 billion in sales. If a competitor offered a more healthful option that was able to capture just a single percent of that market share, it would make $55 million. Chipotle, the best newcomer of the last generation, has beaten that 1 percent handily. Last year, sales approached $3 billion. In the fourth quarter, they grew by 17 percent over the same period in the previous year.

Numbers are tricky to pin down for more healthful options because the fast food industry doesn't yet have a category for "healthful." The industry refers to McDonald's and Burger King as "quick-serve restaurants"; Chipotle is "fast casual"; and restaurants where you order at the counter and the food is brought to you are sometimes called "premium fast casual." Restaurants from these various sectors often deny these distinctions, but QSR, an industry trade magazine — "Limited-Service, Unlimited Possibilities" — spends a good deal of space dissecting them.