No fair!

In only 4 days, I got hornswoggled twice by restaurant salads. You’d think I’d have learned the first time when a signature chopped salad amounted to hundreds more calories and fat grams than I figured.

But, nooooooo. Last night He Who Must Be Obeyed and I had a early light supper, meeting halfway between where I’d been working all day and where he was going to work at night. I won’t name the restaurant, but  it’s a national chain with fruit in the name. And they’ve currently got a big advertising push going on TV for their under 500-calorie meals.

So I see a half portion of their grilled chicken salad on the menu with that same piece of fruit next to it. Silly me, I figured the fruit meant it was healthy! Big fat hah! Emphasis on the ‘fat.’

That half salad, I discovered when I put it into my Livestrong.com daily plate has 682 calories and 42 fat grams, not to mention 1340 grams of sodium. How do you do that to a salad?

It was tasty. Nice, fresh romaine lettuce, a bit of grilled chicken and some almond slices I could have read through. The dressing must be made from rendered hog fat, that’s all I can figure. (If you order it without dressing, the calorie count drops to 320 and the fat gram tally, to only 17.)

But I could have eaten a rare, lean steak for less fat, calories and sodium. In fact, I’m headed to the kitchen now to toss about 4 ounces of poached chicken breast with some lovely buttercrunch from the garden and one tablespoon of Ken’s Steakhouse Lite Balsamic Vinaigrette. I expect the calorie count to be about one-third of last night’s.

So, here’s my point, national chains of restaurants. If you can’t make the nutritional content of your recipes as easy to access as McDonald’s where it’s on the back of every paper placemat, don’t count on my business. I need to know calories, fat grams and sodium content. I know you know it and I know you’re not helping the obesity epidemic with diet boobytraps in what should be healthy entrees.

Some municipalities have discussed trying to legislate salt content in restaurant offerings. I don’t care if some things are high in sodium, just let us know which. And, P.S., I dropped another pound this morning (27 so far) so maybe that hog fat has some other beneficial properties!