Eating out can be a minefield. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has released the Xtreme Eating Awards for 2009.
The subtitle of the article, about the Xtreme Eating Award, put out by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is “Care for an entrée with your entrée?” Another good quote is, “Forget the arms race. It’s the waist race.”
The article highlights some of the more extreme choices at chain restaurants.
An example is the Chicken and Biscuits from the Cheesecake Factory. This entrée has 2,500 calories. Since most of us would probably have some type of appetizer, and a drink or too, we could be consuming close to 3,500 calories at one meal.
Another featured dish is Applebee’s Quesadilla burger. Which is a bacon cheeseburger inserted into a quesadilla. This actually sounds quite good to me. However, it has 1,820 calories, 46 g of saturated fat and 4,410 mg of sodium. Apparently you can add chili fries, or more cheese to this entree.
To put the Quesadilla burger in perspective, 46g of saturated fat is more than 3 oz of butter (3/4 of a stick). The entrée also contains 4,410 mg of sodium. The daily recommended amount of dietary sodium in the US is 2,300 mg per day and in the UK it is 1,600 mg. The DASH diet, designed by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NIH) to lower blood pressure, suggests a goal of 1,500 mg dietary sodium for effective lowering of blood pressure. Using the UK level, or the lower level suggested for blood pressure control, the quesadilla has almost 3 days worth of sodium. With that much sodium I am sure I would drink quite a bit, which would increase the calorie intake.
The question is, would seeing the calories, saturated fat and sodium listed for every item on the menu make us make better choices. My guess is that initially yes, but then we would not pay much attention. What do you think? Would seeing the nutrition data affect what you chose? Check out the article.
[tags]Xtreme Eating Awards, calories, saturated fat, sodium, blood pressure, quesadilla[/tags]
