Xtreme Eating – Restaurant Style

The restaurant industry has ruined our notion of what an appropriate portion or serving looks like.  Has this ever happened to you?  You go out to eat some where, and they serve up an enormous amount of food on your plate.  You start eating, and it looks like you’ve barely touched your food.  The waitress stops by to ask if everything it alright.  You say yes, and feel guilty that you haven’t eaten very much, so you eat some more.  You keep on eating, until you have consumed way more than a single portion.  Then, when you are served up a proper portion, you feel cheated, because you aren’t getting very much food for your money. 

Here is just one instance that I keep referring back to in my dining out experiences.  There was a little, hole-in-the-wall crab shack on the beach in Pinellas County that had the best crab in town – king, dungeness, snow, blue – and a great price.  The first time I went there, I ordered the blue crab cooked in a white wine, garlic sauce.  When it arrived, I had a heaping bowl that contained an entire box of cooked spaghetti noodles and 6 whole blue crabs – all for $11.99!  Definately a great deal, but it was clearly not a single meal!  In fact, I had my dinner, took home the leftovers, fed myself and my two daughters the leftovers for dinner the next night and still had enough for lunch the following day.  I have no idea what the calorie or fat content was, but this is an example of extreme servings. 

Read more about extreme dining in the following article from www.FoodConsumer.org:

We’ve heard it all before; Americans eat too much.  While many of us have already heard this grim news ad infinitum, the Center for Science in the Public interest wants us to realize just how serious the situation is.

That’s why they’ve just announced the winners of their annual “Xtreme Eating Awards”, a list of chain restaurants that offer the most calorie dense offerings in the contiguous forty-eight.

Some of the winners:

 PF Chang’s Double Pan Fried Noodles Combo, (1820 calories)

The Cheesecake Factory’s Pasta Carbonara with chicken, (2500 calories)

Bob Evans’ Cinnamon Cream Stacked and Stuffed Hotcakes, (1,380 calories)

In looking at the numbers, the Center’s nutrition director, Bonnie Liebman, contends that these meals are so huge and have such an enormous amount of fat that even splitting them wouldn’t be that much of an advantage, in the overall scheme of things.

In addition to the caloric overload these entrees boast, the number of fat grams in each of them is absolutely obscene, especially when you consider Liebman’s directive for the average American:  2,000 calories per day, and no more than 20 grams of fat.

Obesity rates notwithstanding, we can still consume way too much fat, even if we manage to keep our caloric intake down.  The goal, according to nutritionists, is to pack as many healthy nutrients as possible into those 2,000 calories, not too merely focus on calorie counting.

For example, if a person ate 7 Little Debbie blueberry muffins and nothing else all day, he or she would remain well below the 2, 000 calorie limit at 1.330.  However, the number of fat grams consumed in such an instance is a whopping 56 grams.

Some of the chains named on “the list” have issued statements; PF Chang’s reminds patrons that their meals are served family style with the notion that families will “share” a variety of appetizers, entrees, side dishes, etc.

A spokesman for The Cheesecake Factory asserts that many of their meals are perfect to take home for a second meal later on.

Of course, we must concede that the Xtreme list is a bit inflammatory, but the purpose of it is to shock us all into realizing what we’re doing to our bodies, and more importantly, what we’re doing to ourselves as a nation, collectively.  For the sake of our future, let’s hope it works.

Posted by Laurie Puckett, Remmel Wellness Center – a full service chiropractic and wellness facility in St. Petersburg, Florida.