In an effort to offer healthier menu items, McDonald’s has unveiled a new salad with a “nutrient-rich lettuce blend with baby kale,” shaved parmesan, and chicken (grilled or fried). Like many fast-food salads, it may seem like a healthy option at first, but it’s not. The salad, when paired with the restaurant’s Asiago Caesar Dressing, packs more fat, calories, and salt than a double Big Mac—that’s a sandwich with four beef patties.
While the nutrition check on a McDonald’s item may not come as a shock, the unhealthy salad option falls into a bigger trend of restaurant meals—fast food or not, eating out is hard on your waistline and health.
In one recent study, researchers found that 92 percent of large-chain, local-chain, and mom-and-pop restaurants served meals that exceeded the calorie intake for a healthy meal. The study included 364 meals from restaurants in three cities: Boston, San Francisco, and Little Rock, Arkansas. The meals covered American, Chinese, Greek, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Thai, and Vietnamese-style cuisine.
In 123 of the restaurants sampled, at least one menu entrée exceeded the recommended amount of calories for an entire day—and that didn’t include drinks, appetizers, or desserts. Meals from American, Chinese and Italian-style restaurants tipped the scales with the most calories, an average of 1,495 calories per meal.
Another recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a similar trend in restaurants in and around California Polytechnic State University. The study looked at meals from 20 on-campus food joints and 37 off-campus. Only 12 percent of the 314 meals tested were considered healthy by the researchers. They defined a healthy entrée as having no more than 800 calories, 30 percent or less of calories from fat, and no more than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat. Only 36 percent of entrée salads met the mark for a healthy meal.
Perhaps most striking, fast-food restaurants scored better at having healthy food options than sit-down restaurants.
Journal of the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 2015. DOI: 10.1016/j.jand.2015.11.009
(About DOIs).
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