“[O]our relationship with fast food has changed,” Mark Bittman wrote. “We’ve gone from the whistle-blowing stage to the higher-expectations stage, and some of those expectations are being met. …There are dozens of plant-based alternatives to meat, with more on the way; increasingly, they’re pretty good.”

As such, Bittman maintains a fast-food chain that’s healthful and vegetarian-friendly is possible and would satisfy a growing demand from consumers.

“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.”

Over the past few years, the fast-food industry has begun responding to those evolving preferences, investing billions of dollars in more healthful fast-food options.

He touches on several other growing chains that improve on the traditional fast-food concept, each that offers improved food quality though often at the expense of cost (some approach $15 or even $20 a meal), speed or taste.

“Good Fast Food doesn’t need to be vegan or even vegetarian,” Bittman concludes, though “it just ought to be real, whole food.” To succeed, he offers a few key points to consider:

“My advice would be to skip the service and the wine, make a limited menu with big flavors and a few treats and keep it as cheap as you can. Of course, there are huge players who could do this almost instantaneously. But the best thing they seem able to come up with is the McWrap or the fresco menu.

“In the meantime, I’m throwing out a few recipes to the entire fast-food world to help build a case that it’s possible use real ingredients to create relatively inexpensive, low-calorie, meat-free, protein-dense, inexpensive fast food.”