Sit-Down restaurants aren’t always better
9 05 2008As I continue to procrastinate on this rainy day, when I should be doing my final papers, I came upon a statement about sit-down restaurant meals having more calories than fast-food joints. The statement was found on Men’s Health online, and said that the “average entree at a sit-down restaurant contains 867 calories, compared with 522 calories in the average fast-food entree.” At first I was a bit surprised; my initial thought was of surprise because it is usually the fast-food restaurants that are constantly assaulted in the media about its waistline-busting junk mistakenly called food.
Then I thought more about it. These figures are calculated without appetizers, deserts, sides, and probably without drinks too. Why do people tend to think that sit-down restaurant food is healthier than fast-food? Like I alluded to earlier, fast-food restaurants are usually the focus on “bad food reports” in the media, but there must be another reason why people think that going to Outback and ordering a meal is healthier than going to Burger King. Regardless of the reason, it makes absolute sense that sit-down places tend to have more unhealthy meals.
One: The size of the meals tend to be larger because they are not designed to be portable, and are often designed to resemble family meals with the larger portions.
Two:Because restaurants want to emulate family-style eating, not only are the portions larger, but the types of food resemble the comfort foods many people eat at home (large portions of mashed potatoes served as the side is the example that comes first to me).
Three: You don’t usually get desert and other extras with fast-food meals. How many pieces of free breadsticks do you eat at Olive Garden, for example?
So the next time you’re trying to stay on track on the road to a healthy lifestyle and you want to take your family out to eat, remember that sit-down places are not always the best choices. The informed consumer will be the healthiest one as well 
“On the side! On the side!”
(That is my chant the second I walk into any restaurant. That, and “Can I substitute that with…”).
And you KNOW its bad when not only are we overeating at these places, but we’re usually not even getting good nutrients. How can there be so many people overeating and yet having nutrient deficiencies at the same time?!
Quite ironic, isn’t it? At a time where food is everywhere, people still aren’t able to get the nutrients they need.
I LOVE THAT LAST SENTENCE as that’s what it’s all about.
even when you CHOOSE to eat junk—-it’s a choice then not a “but I thought I was eating healthy!!”
Yep, what we eat is definitely our choosing; you are not forced to eat anything, especially junk, so there shouldn’t be any excuses for not being informed.
Good point. That’s why I don’t blame any fast food joints for “making us fat”. They’re just a business. They just happen to be really good at making money.
Yep, they are good at making money because consumers make it that way. The businesses are just giving consumers what they want; that’s why I sometimes get annoyed when my friends or people I talk to blame the businesses. No one is forcing you to eat there, so quit blaming everything on the businesses.