Cut the calories and the carbs, even at a fast-food chain!

Let’s face it: delicious as they may be, beef bowls are not exactly the healthiest meal. Juicy, meaty goodness slow-cooked in a savory-sweet broth and served over rice, often topped with delicious things like cheese or even yakisoba…well, that’s a high calorie count if we’ve ever seen one. But Japanese beef bowl chain restaurant Matsuya is making sure that even health-conscious individuals can enjoy their food by allowing their customers to choose to replace their rice with a salad.

The option is called “low-carb change” (ローカボチェンジ), and applies to gyudon beef bowls, teishoku set meals, curries, and bento boxes (so long as they have the regular size rice). You can do it for takeout orders as well as dine-in, so any time you order from Matsuya, you can choose to go low-carb.

By choosing the low-carb change, the salad you get has 95 percent fewer carbohydrates than the rice it replaces, and 93 fewer calories too, so for the health-conscious, this is an excellent option.

You might be wondering if, by replacing the rice with salad, the Matsuya staff ends up turning your beef rice bowl into a beef salad, but the answer is no. They put the vegetables on the side, so you get a bowl of beef, a bowl of salad, and a bowl of miso soup. And in the case of teishoku set meals, since they already come with a salad if, you chose to do the low-carb change you’ll get an extra salad, so you can get not one, but two helpings of delicious veggies.

The best part about it is that the low-carb change is a free option. Oftentimes such substitutions cost a little money, as it did when they offered customers the choice to exchange their rice for tofu. But not so with this deal–you can cut the calories and the carbs at no cost to yourself, so you don’t have to use the cost as an excuse to eat healthily.

As big beef bowl fans we can’t imagine ever eating a beef bowl without rice, but it seems like an easy and healthy switch to make, so we might try it out on days when we feel like we’ve been eating too much ice cream, bread, and sweets.

Source, images: PR Times
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