Picture this. You go out to a restaurant with some friends. Instead of ordering the fried onion rings or juicy burger, you sacrifice for the sake of being healthy by ordering a salad. You look with a bit of envy at your friends’ plates when the meal is delivered. The sizzling fajitas smell so good. The stringy chili fries looks so nummy. You bite into your cold, prudent salad and feel a little bit mollified, thinking that at least you’re the most sensible one at the table. Right?
Well, perhaps not. Unfortunately, restaurant salads can be very deceiving. Take Applebee’s Oriental Chicken Salad with Oriental vinaigrette dressing. It contains 1,430 calories. Yikes! That is a mountain of calories. Quizno’s Honey Mustard Chicken Regular Chopped Salad has 920 calories and a whopping 65 grams of fat. Chili’s Quesadilla Explosion Salad has 1400 calories and 88 grams of fat. I’ll just say it—that’s outrageous.
I read an article by a health expert who said that at Mexican restaurants, salads are the least healthy items on the menu. That may be opinion in part, but there is a warning that comes through—don’t over-trust a salad.
What might make the calories and fat tip on the heavy side are the dressing, breaded and fried meat, fried shells, croutons, cheese, and oversized portions. If in doubt on how to order, order salads that have the calorie and fat content listed in the menu, or research the information before going to the restaurant. If I’m going to make sacrifices when I eat out, I want them to count.
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