I was reading this article linked off MSN:

16 Secrets the Restaurant Industry Doesn't Want You to Know and the author had a link to the nutritional information at Red Robin, which I had always wanted to know:

http://www.redrobin.com/home/customizer.aspx

Red Robin has always been a place where I thought I could find something healthy and low cal on the menu. I always ordered the grilled salmon on a whole wheat bun, no bistro sauce, with lettuce and tomato (I would squeeze lemon on the salmon and sprinkle on some of that spicy seasoning that sits on the table).

I had no idea of the calorie count, but generously estimated 500 calories, because I was in a restaurant and I figured it would be higher than I thought. Per the "customizer" - 742 calories.

Restaurants NEVER cease to shock me.

I'm glad they've added this.

Looks like the bun is 240 calories. Fries are 390 calories.

My normal order is a veggie burger, sometimes with a lettuce bun, sometimes whole grain, sometimes side salad, sometimes fries.

It's really appalling. How in the world can IHOP build an omelet for 1,150 calories? I eat out so rarely now. I can make yummy healthy food at home and I can control the quality and the nutrition. Once I ordered a grilled veggie sandwich with a side of fruit. After I ate it, I found the calorie counts online---over 700 calories for *grilled veggies* *fruit* and the *bread*---must have been one heck of a loaf of bread. But it is crazy how restaurants manage to cram calories into things that should/could be healthy.

I like grilled salmon, but I have never had a grilled salmon sandwich that was worth 700 calories.

I know we have an international community here, but bear with me for the following statement. It's no wonder the USA has an obesity epidemic. Yikes!

I didn't see anywhere that they give you the sodium content either.
That's my biggest gripe with Red Robin--everything I've ever gotten is too salty. Could be just the individual restuarant depending on who is salting stuff that day. I don't go there anymore.

Midwife, IHOP adds pancake batter to all their omelets and that's what sends the calorie count into the stratosphere. Can you believe it??

Restaurant calorie counts are truly insane. I read that the cheapest way for a restaurant to make food taste better is to add lots and lots of fat, so that's probably what happened to your grilled veggie sandwich. Keep in mind that "grilled" in a restaurant means it's cooked on those big flat griddles where they do the burgers swimming in grease. It's not grilled like on your grill in the backyard where fat drips down through the grates.

Glory, I always estimate that any food in a restaurant is double the number of calories than the same thing cooked at home but it looks like the reality is a lot worse. That is a truly horrifying article.

OMG! Who can believe it? Well, I never go near IHOP anyway, and here's yet another reason to stay away.

Jay

Man, I know what you guys mean about restaurants! I went out to dinner at one of those places that has the "light" menu kind of deal, and for one of their light meals, it would cost me 800+ calories! FORGET IT! I'll eat at home.

Apparently, the pancake batter makes the omelettes "Fluffy". I think there should be some sort of disclosure from restaurants if they're adding someting so ridiculously outlandish to a food item. PANCAKE BATTER? Give me a break.

I actually knew this but it upsets me when I hear it anyway.

97 grams of fat??! In one burger?! Really?! That one really floored me. All the food I could eat in place of that one burger! Oh my!
And 13 mg trans fat in BKs hash browns. Just yuck.

I think I'm starting to like this eating at home all the time thing more and more.

It was not on that article but I recently found out that Macaroni Grill, (my favorite), their salmon and asparagus….that it, just salmon and asparagus was about 2200 calories. I was in shock. That was my final straw. I try not to eat out anymore.

Also, another big shocker to me was the grocery store. I kid you not, you have to read EVERY label. I was buying this sad looking chicken that looked like it was just boiled and cut into chunks. I use in my salads to help with my protein content. Well I decided to read the label and it had many many other ingredients in it than just chicken, like the artificial flavoring, high fructose corn syrup, etc. I was like ‘ITS JUST PLAIN CHICKEN’ I was hurt, now I really felt betrayed. I now have to make my own organic chicken on Sunday for the whole week. It is such a pain in the butt.

Insatiable, you'll appreciate this -- here are the ingredients for a grilled chicken breast from McDonalds. Not a sandwich, just the "chicken":

Grilled Chicken Breast Filet:
Chicken breast filets with rib meat, water, seasoning (salt, sugar, food starch-modified, maltodextrin, spices, dextrose, autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolyzed [corn gluten, soy, wheat gluten] proteins, garlic powder, paprika, chicken fat, chicken broth, natural flavors (plant and animal source), caramel color, polysorbate 80, xanthan gum, onion powder, extractives of paprika), modified potato starch, and sodium phosphates. CONTAINS: SOY AND WHEAT. Prepared with Liquid Margarine: Liquid soybean oil, water, partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oils, salt, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, soy lecithin, mono- and diglycerides, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservative), artificial flavor, citric acid, vitamin A palmitate, beta carotene (color). CONTAINS: SOY LECITHIN

http://www.mcdonalds.com/app_control...nts.index.html

I was in shock, just like you. Shouldn't chicken be ... chicken? It's just a frickin' chicken breast and it has 40 ingredients (if I counted right)?! That's insane!

I'm appalled. Pancake batter?? And I consider myself fairly educated about nutrition....I never would have guessed that an omelet could be such a nutrition disaster.

Wow. I'm sorta speechless.

IT'S JUST CHICKEN!!




I am scared to eat!

. . . I just entered the salmon burger without the sauce and no added sides and it came out to 440 calories.

on the menus at our IHOP there is.

that's why i always get the egg beater omlette they don't add it to that one.


i just tried the red robin customizer... never again will i have the salad i always eat there... OMG even with the modifications I make it's nearly 1000 calories...