Eating out can be like a spin of the roulette wheel — place your bets on the wrong selection and you can consume a day’s worth of calories in one sitting. While there are high-calorie menu items at almost all restaurants, your chances of selecting a high-calorie meal are greater at some restaurants. Learn where the stakes are highest and how to raise your chances of making a healthy choice.
Fast Food
Fast-food menus are known for their high-calorie foods — from burgers and fries to pizza and wings. A quick look at the nutrition information at nearly any fast-food restaurant shows that this reputation is well-earned, though some fast food menus are worse than others. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the burger chain Five Guys packs an especially large number of calories into their menu. For instance, a Five Guys Bacon Cheeseburger contains the calories of approximately two McDonald’s Quarter Pounders and its large order of fries is three times the size of McDonald’s. The two together are a whopping 2,380 calories.
Casual and Fine Dining Restaurants
High-calorie foods don’t only lurk on fast food menus. Casual-dining chains, like Outback Steakhouse, Chevys and the Cheesecake Factory, show up over and over again on lists of restaurants with highest-calorie entrees, desserts and appetizers, including earning places on the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s 2010 Xtreme Eating Awards. Though chain restaurants receive the most attention for their high-calorie foods, some independent casual- and fine-dining restaurants have a line-up of high calorie foods on their menus as well — their nutrition information is just harder or impossible to find. If your favorite steakhouse, Italian bistro or Mexican eatery serves dishes that are heavy on meat, butter, cheese and cream, chances are they belong on the list as well — particularly if they dish out large servings.
Nutrition Information
While nutrition information is accessible for most chain restaurants on their websites or somewhere in their establishments, the number of calories in menu items will soon be obvious to everyone. As part of the health care legislation signed into law in March 2010, all restaurants with 20 or more locations will be required to post calorie counts for their menu items directly on their menu or menu board. The U.S Food and Drug Association will begin implementing this requirement in 2011.
Navigating Menus
Many chain restaurants designate healthier options with a symbol on the menu. If you’re dining somewhere that doesn’t point out the healthier choices or post calorie counts, choose grilled or broiled lean meats and fishes, vegetarian dishes that aren’t loaded with cream or cheese and desserts that are heavy on fruit with just a drizzle of chocolate or whipped cream.
Home Dining
We hear so much about the high number of calories in restaurant food that we sometimes forget to examine the menu in our own home. A report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that each meal or snack eaten out rather than prepared at home adds an average of 134 calories to your day’s total; so generally speaking, foods cooked at home are healthier than those prepared at restaurants. But if your home menu consists of many prepared foods from the grocery store, red and processed meats or dishes laden with cheese, butter and cream, you may want to make some changes to lower the calories coming out of your own kitchen. Aim for more grilled and broiled lean meats and fishes, and
