Are Chain Restaurants Making Americans Fatter?

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) awarded their 2009 Xtreme eating awards to The Cheesecake Factory, Olive Garden, and Applebees for offering appetizers, entrées, and desserts that give you a whole day's worth of calories in one dish. The average person needs about 2,000 calories a day and should limit their intake of saturated fat to 20 grams, and of sodium to 1,500 mg, keep this in mind when you read the list below of the nutrition (or lack thereof) in some of the meals at chain restaurants:

· Cheesecake Factory's Fried Macaroni and Cheese which contains 1,570 calories and 69 grams of saturated fat. Why on earth would you fry macaroni and cheese? “You would be better off eating an entire stick of butter”
· Olive Garden's Tour of Italy invites you to pile Lasagna, Chicken Parmigiana, and Fettuccine Alfredo onto a very large dinner plate.
· Uno Chicago Grill, The Melting Pot and Olive Garden's Red Lobster Ultimate Fondue, described as "shrimp and crabmeat in a creamy lobster cheese sauce served in a warm crispy sourdough bowl," contains 1,490 calories, 40 grams of saturated fat, and 3,580 mg of sodium.
· Applebee's Quesadilla Burger is essentially a bacon cheeseburger inside a quesadilla and contains two flour tortillas, two kinds of meat, two kinds of cheese, pico de gallo, lettuce, Mexi-ranch sauce, and fries. This dish has 1,820 calories, 46 grams of saturated fat, and 4,410 mg of sodium. Plus there is an option to top up the fries with more sauce and cheese.
· Chili's Big Mouth Bites is four mini-bacon-cheeseburgers with fries, onion strings, and jalapeno ranch dipping sauce. Apparently each of these mini burgers is about a quarter pounder. This dish comes as an appetizer or an entrée. The entrée version contains 2,350 calories, 38 grams of saturated fat, and 3,940 milligrams of sodium.
· The Cheesecake Factory's Chicken and Biscuits has 2,500 calories. In my opinion this is the worst meal I have ever seen (notice I say seen and not eaten). I have a story about this meal... when I first moved to the US, I went to dinner with one of my co-workers. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner, and there was a long wait so while he waited I browsed around the mall (the restaurant was in a mall). The wait wasn’t as long as expected so when I got back, he was already sitting, and had ordered a meal for me. He ordered Chicken and Biscuits! When the meal arrived, I took one look at it and said “I can’t eat that”. I lost my appetite just by looking at it. The chicken was white and looked uncooked, there was gravy all over it with some biscuits plopped on top. Okay, I don’t like biscuits, I don’t like thick gravy and I don’t like chicken that looks uncooked. I knew that I would get sick if I ate that meal and thought to myself, “NO WAY am I eating that!”

I really don’t believe that the restaurants are making people fat, people have to take responsibility for their own actions. But I do agree with what organizations like CSPI are trying to do. They are trying to get restaurants to show calories and other nutrition basics on the menus. Their argument is “consumers can’t make an informed choice without the nutrition and calorie figures." Hopefully people can start making informed choices and stop blaming restaurants on making them fat!