There’s over 1,000 calories in many of the entrees served at Italian restaurant chains Olive Garden and Macaroni Grill, reports the Center for Science in the Public Interest. They sent the food from the restaurants to an independent lab for analysis and found that a typical dinner there could hit you with about 3,000 calories, nearly a day and half’s worth of food. No wonder we’re such fatasses. Americans are addicted to calories and restaurant chains are happy to keep serving them up.
We wrote about this before, but now here’s the caloric breakdowns of the two eateries menus, inside…
A 3,000-Calorie Dinner? Belly-ssimo! [CPSI via Consumer World Blog]
Italian Restaurant Food: Belly-ssimo! (PDF) [CPSI]
(Photo: Getty)
PREVIOUSLY: How Many Quarter Pounders From McDonald’s Could You Eat Instead Of That Pasta?
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*obligatory post from foodie who wouldn’t DREAM of patronizing one of those faux-Italian chain restaurants and only goes to REAL Italian restaurants run by real Italians*
@Consumerist Moderator – ACAMBRAS: Two more:
Fuck That.
:p
@ahwannabe: Obligatory post from “I’m really getting sick of idiots who sit around screaming that anything not made by some microscopic hole in the wall is total junk and can’t possibly be liked by anyone even though these places are obviously making food that people like, so shove the prejudicial and judgmental attitude” type.
@valthun: That’s what I say. I eat pizza and fettucine alfredo, but am I getting any fatter for it? No, I’m not. I don’t eat those things every day. The pizza, once a week or so, the alfredo every so often.
I’m sick and tired of this “if it’s not tasteless bland health food crap you should never eat it” bullshit.
@ColdNorth: Gee Coldnorth , thank-you so very much for painting all of us Americans with that overly broad brush of yours. Must be tough to be you huh ? Any other manufactured hysteria you need to spew out today ?
As for the rest of the commentors, next thing you are going to tell me is that other places like TGIF Fridays is bad for me too!
/sarcasm
@Finder:
I was under the impression that you could only order the lunch portion until 3:00 or something like that. In fact, I think I’ve been told I couldn’t order it because it was after 3:00 or 4:00. If I’m refused the lunch portion after a certain time, is there a company policy I can cite that says it’s OK for them to give it to me?
@spugbrap: Amen.
@ColdNorth: “Of course they do. That’s why we have an ongoing obesity epidemic.”
Right, because nothing about that is panicky media making an overblown disaster out of something that isn’t as backed up by medical science as people think…BMIs aren’t rising because they were “readjusted” or anything.
We might be getting fatter, but if so you can’t blame it on Macaroni Grill or Olive Garden. People choose to eat that food and it’s their right and privilege to do so. End of story, that’s all there is to it.
If people didn’t want it, then those stores would change and serve lower fat portions.
Why is the “obesity epidemic” crap hitting Consumerist every other day right now anyway? I don’t need them to tell me pasta is fattening. I don’t need them to tell me about portion control. I want them to tell me about companies who are trying to fleece the public, about scams I should avoid, privacy concerns, etc.
And don’t tell me that obesity is costing people money so it’s a consumer issue. If that’s the only reason people have, then it’s a poor one.
@ZekeSulastin: you both sound a little underweight to me. 5’8 160 and I can see most of my abs (the bottom ones are harder to see).
The fact is that any time you go out to eat, you’ll probably eat something that is not only fattening or deadly with the sodium, but they will give you too much of it.
Don’t go out to eat everyday or night and when you do…slow down and enjoy the food. you may find that you won’t eat the entire portion if you don’t cram it in so fast.
I think if the media should spend as much time TRYING TO DO something about the obesity epidemic as they spend sensationalizing it. This stuff is coming up 3x a day in the news now here, spouting facts such as 1 in every 5 children are obese by the time they reach 6th grade and yada yada yada.. Stop spouting facts that you cannot back up and instead actually try to do something about it, such as REMOVING processed food from school lunches and encorporating a daily excercise regimen as part of classes in grade school and up. I see little being actually done around me to help children eat healthier and excercise more however the media keeps sensationalizing that our children are fat and sensationalizing that we are lazy and that we are killing ourselves yet nothing is being actually done on a large scale about these things, and its clearly a large scale problem due to the media’s reporting on it.
@Auntie M.: No, it should be any time of day. Like I said in my last two posts, however, the policy could have changed, but I doubt it.
Wow. I kind of figured many of the pasta dishes would clock in over 4 figures, but the bruschetta? What does their’s look like? Is it actually this thing?:
[images.google.com]
This is no shocker — the few times I’ve been to olive garden, I leave dizzy.
This is why I stay away from restaurant meals. I have a bad case of Clean Plate Syndrome and I find it easier to stay away from restaurants entirely than to stop eating halfway through the meal, especially when I’m with someone who’s going to be eating for another 15-20 minutes after I stop. It’s not fun for me to sit and do mental battle with the tasty food staring up at me from the plate. And I hate taking food home.
And no, I don’t want to just get the salad. I like a lot of vegetables, but I gag on the white, crunchy kind of lettuce that is the mainstay of most restaurant salads. I’d rather order nothing at all than a big dish of lettuce.
Basically I’d be happy if restaurant entrees were 1/2 or 1/3 the size, even if the price were nearly the same. If I can trade higher quality for some of the quantity that’s even better. Until the average chain makes some changes, I’ll stick to eating at home.
@baltwade: My husband’s 6’4″ and 160.
And no, not underweight (though definitely a stick!). He has light bones and his muscle doesn’t “bulk” at all, it’s always rangy and ropey. Some people are just “denser” than others, which is why two people can be exactly the same height and weight and look very, very different.
Considering that on my post-heart-attack diet I’m limited to 17 grams of sat-fat a DAY it’s easy to see why I don’t eat out very much.
@csdiego: I have the Clean Plate Syndrome, too. Probably due to those “There are starving children in China/Africa/Russia…” guilt trips I got when I was a kid.
And I agree, I like salads well enough – but 95% of the time, they’re made with the absolutely tasteless iceberg lettuce, which is just dreadful.
@Buran: Why do you hate America???!!?!???
What a post!!! WOW I wonder how much thought went into this.
In other news, a big pile of dough will make you fat!
Jesus.
Who cares? Nobody who orders an entree drowning in cheese and cream expects it to be healthy.
While I am moderately impressed by the amount of calories involved, I don’t eat at Olive Garden on a regular basis. Which means, I don’t care a whole lot. I never thought it was healthy!
I wish people would stop griping about the large portion sizes. If the portion sizes went down and the prices came down too, I wouldn’t mind so much, but why should I pay the same price for half the amount of food? If it’s too much, I can halve it myself and ask for a doggie bag. I’m HAPPY when it’s too much for me! Who doesn’t want restaruant food for lunch the next day?
@Ola: “Who doesn’t want restaruant food for lunch the next day?”
Well, I don’t, for a bunch of reasons. If I want big heaps of cheap food, I’ll go to Costco (and I do). To me dinner in a restaurant is a chance to relax over a nice meal, especially one with a bunch of tiny courses that would be a pain to make at home, not a chance to get a head start on tomorrow’s lunch. Judging from the huge portions in restaurants out there, I’m probably in the minority. All I’m saying is that as long as restaurants aren’t meeting my needs, I’m going to stay away from them.