When in Rome.... - what does skip the dishes charge restaurants

The next time you get your dinner menu at your favorite Italian restaurant, consider: * point fetucini Alfredo, you fill your arteries with just as much saturated fat as triple pint Breyer butter almond ice cream.
You might as well eat five egg rolls for eggplant.
* Eat a fried squid as an appetizer and you lower your cholesterol more than four peopleegg omelet.
What happened here?
Shouldn't Italian food be healthy? It is. . . in Italy.
As we found out recently when analyzing the food in Italian restaurants, it can also be here.
You can attribute our results to one word: pasta.
Southern Italy has mainly eaten pasta, bread, beans, vegetables, fruits and olive oil for generations.
Although this is changing, their rates of heart disease, colon cancer, and obesity are still much lower than those of Americans.
Meat and cheese are almost used as condiments (heart disease and cancer are more common in the north ).
Unfortunately, we found that Italian food in the United States is more like the North than the South.
Following the same game plan we used in analyzing Chinese restaurant food in last September, we bought dinner --size take-
Portions of 15 popular dishes in 21
Italian restaurants in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
We then ship them to a separate laboratory for analysis of calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium.
We didn't make pizza because it was more like fast food.
) Pasta is the perfect choice for Chinese food and pasta is the perfect choice for Italian food.
It will reduce fat.
Order a main course, mainly pasta or pasta, you will.
It is likely to be less than the 30% calories recommended by many health authorities.
20%, we say.
It can be tomato sauce or clam sauce.
You can eat meat sauce or meatballs.
Fat will only increase to 35% calories even if sausage is added.
The only exception is cream. and-cheese-
Sauce like "Alfredo.
So is the artery-
Blocked saturated fat
Many experts recommend keeping sat fat below 10% calories.
7%, we say.
No pasta except pasta
Based on more than 9% dishes.
It's not as low as Chinese food, but it's ashamed of standard American food.
So why not add tomato sauce pasta to a fatter dish like eggplant Parmigiana?
There are many restaurants.
Neither do we rank. pasta entrees.
) Of course, add a typical 1/2-
Put a cup of spaghetti on the eggplant and you can reduce its fat from about 60% calories to about 45 calories.
It's better to order at least one pasta.
Basic dishes of each piece of meator-cheese-
Fat based on main course and melon--
Sorry, food--
In diners
Knowing that you can find a low-fat main course in an Italian restaurant is not a relief, but it's not all.
Most entrees serve at least 1,500 mg of sodium, which makes it difficult for you to stay under the limit of 1,800 to 2,400 mg per day.
To make matters worse, many people don't eat vegetables in Italian restaurants.
In a Chinese restaurant, it is easy to order a dish of fresh cooked vegetables as the main course.
In Italian restaurants, there are only vegetables next to meat, chicken or fish.
Even so, it usually doesn't have a cup, it's covered with oil or butter.
Side salad is more common.
But they are mainly rolls of lettuce made of chopped carrots, red cabbage and tomatoes.
Add two typical-
A tablespoon of ordinary Italian seasoning, you have a fat content of 25 points a day.
This is worth more than vegetables.
This is the exclusive news of the dishes we analyzed.
We can't guarantee that you will get exactly the same thing at a local restaurant, but as far as we know, no one has better information.
We have ranked dishes from the lowest to the highest calorie in fat.
In this way, they will not be limited by the portion sizes provided by your restaurant.
But also pay attention to the grams of fat--
Target no more than 45 to 65 per day.
Don't forget to add two grams of fat and one gram of saturated fat to each tablespoon of Parmesan cheese you sprinkle.
The percentage of calories in fat and fat grams per dish is in parentheses behind the name. MAIN DISHES1.
Pasta with tomato sauce (18%--17 g fat).
About half of the ketchup we tested was made of gravy.
A (meat-free) marinade may have less fat. 2.
Red Clam Sauce (23%--23 g fat).
The heat from sat fat is only 4% (wow!
), But sodium (0ofl) almost a day ). 3.
Spaghetti Sauce (25%--25 g fat).
Not bad because all pasta is over three to four ounces of greasy ground beef. 4.
White clam sauce (29%--29 g fat).
It only has 5% of the heat coming from saturated fat, which is a great option if you are all "cartoonized. 5.
Spaghetti with Meatballs (30%--39 g fat).
Expect a third more meat than the meat sauce.
Make it better: ask for your meatballs with ketchup instead of fat sauce. 6.
Pasta (340/0--33 g fat).
Why (usually) 25 grams of fat can be provided by peeling chicken breast alone?
Must be the oil or butter normally added to the masala wine in the sauce.
Do Better: be stingy with the sauce. 7.
Sausage pasta (34%--39 g fat).
Pasta is three times more than the fat salami, which explains why the dish ends up getting 9% of the calories from saturated fat.
However, this will cost you more than 1,000 calories and 2,400 mg of sodium.
Do Better: order sausage with tomato sauce. 8.
Pasta (37%--44 g fat).
Think Veal is the hearthealthy?
How about two or more-
Do the thirty chapters of fat, saturated fat and cholesterol of the day catch you? Make it Better.
Skip the cheese toppings and you'll cut the fat for the next quarter. 9.
Cheese wonton (38%--26 g fat).
Most of the saturated fat comes from three ounces of cheese.
It's worth half a day. . .
But in the order for cheese Manicotti, you will get about the third one. 10.
Eggplant Parmigiana on the pasta side (46%--62 g fat).
Do you think eggplant is a healthy food?
We believe that the season's fat comes from the top of the mozzarella cheese, and the rest comes from the oil absorbed like a sponge by the fried bread eggplant.
Make it better: no cheese, you'll double the fat on the satthirds. 11.
Cheese Chicken sauce (49%--38 g fat).
Nearly half a pound of cheese.
Part of the sat fat you should eat a day-
What do you get with three glasses of whole milk?
Make it better: skip the cheese toppings and you'll reduce the sat fat by a quarter. 12. Lasagna (50%--53 g fat).
All meat and cheese mean saturated fat for the day.
In other words, it's more than two Big Mac.
Make it better: skip the cheese topping.
Better yet, skip the lasagna. 13.
Fetucini Alfredo (58%--97 g fat).
The worst dish you can buy
But, what do you expect from cream, butter, Parmesan and the eggs we see in the third restaurant?
It has 47 grams of arteries.
Blocking saturated fat is more than twice your daily limit.
97 grams of fat, you can leave your senses and eat five McDonald's coins.
Do Better: See if your cardiologist is on call before ordering. APPETIZERS1.
Garlic bread (44%--40 g fat).
Most restaurants tell us
The Oz service is for one person, so that's what our chart lists.
However, for us, there seems to be a lot of things that are equivalent to seven pieces of magic bread.
40 grams of fat comes from butter (almost half a stick) or olive oil (nine teaspoons) and Parmesan cheese in some restaurants.
Do Better: Order Italian bread. 2.
Fried squid (61%--70 g fat).
Most of 70 grams of fat comes from deep layers --
But you can thank the three squid-
A day's cholesterol supply
The restaurant says there is only one copy, but even half is enough to shake your arteries.
Do it better: share it with your desk, the table nearby, the waiter. . . . 3. Antipasto (67%--47 g fat).
After weighing components--
Meat, cheese and pickled vegetables, as well as spices, lettuce and tomatoes
We estimate that if you eat the whole Lolapalooza (as the restaurant claims), you end up with three-
Fat and saturated fat and all (or more) sodium that should be eaten throughout the day.
Make it better: separate from the other three.
Ask to dress on the side, just a little bit, or replace it with vinegar.
Olive Garden is the only national Italian chain restaurant owned by General Mills, which provides nutritional information to diners who are asking. . .
We still can't tell you what's in its food.
Olive Garden has more than 370 restaurants in the United States. S. and Canada--
Three times that four years ago.
Sales are expected to reach $1 billion in 1993.
Despite this success and related to grain --
The restaurant has its own lab and does not analyze what is on the menu.
According to a spokesman, all it has is computing ---
Estimation based on recipes-
This is "outdated based on changes in our recipes.
"But it doesn't stop the Olive Garden from distributing calories, fat, cholesterol and sodium to curious diners.
Or label some guests related to calories, fat and cholesterol as "GF" (garden food.
The company said the "worst case" for the "GF" main course was 500 calories, 30 grams of mice and 140 mg of cholesterol.
Half-day fat and cholesterol only account for a quarter of a day's calories, which uses a much smaller service size than the services we offer in our Olive Garden in three cities.
In short, "GF" may mean anything from "food" to "fat.
"We will ignore it.
Most of the calculations in the Olive Garden are quite close to the lab results in our other restaurants.
Here are the lowest prices for some popular Olive Garden dishes: * garden salad and side dishes.
The Olive Garden offers unlimited salads or soups and all main courses are available.
Ask for half the dress, which is an offer you can't refuse.
Another benefit: the side of pasta (or vegetables) is served with most dishes.
* Garlic bread sticks.
Apply margarine and garlic salt.
Simple.
Mitteron soup. Chock-
Full of vegetables.
If it's as low as the Olive Garden says fat and sodium content, it's a good opening.
Pasta.
This is a very nice bean (fagioli) and pasta soup.
Beef may be used in other restaurants, which means a little less fat. * Veal Marsala.
Bread and fried before frying with wine and mushrooms. Watch out. * Veal Piccata.
"Tender natural veal with sauerkraut, mushrooms and fresh lemon.
"I guess there is not enough room on the menu to say," Fried a pool of oil with a mandarin. . .
Grilled chicken in Venice.
Roast chicken breast with marinade.
It should be low fat. Mamma Mia! Even the lower-
The fat main course contains too much sodium to get the "Best Bite ".
So we give "Better Bites" to foods that have no more than 30% fat calories and no more than 10% saturated fat calories ".
The heat of the dish is from the lowest to the highest in fat, but be careful.
When the main course is served to us with tomato sauce pasta, we include pasta (an average of 1/2 cups) when determining the ranking ).
This may greatly reduce the percentage of calories dishes get from fat, so check fat grams as well.
What is the service?
The average portion size of each dish is in parentheses behind the name.
We get it by measuring the portions we serve at each restaurant.
If you eat less, your fat will decrease.
Apart from the two New York platters, part is considered a service (we checked with the restaurant first)
Tell us that there are at least two restaurants serving part of it.
(They do serve twice as much weight as other restaurants give us. )ITALIAN vs.
How about these dishes compared to the Chinese food we analyzed in last September?
Saturated fat in Chinese is generally low.
Other than that, it depends on what you ordered. A low-
Fat Chinese entrees like Sichuan shrimp or fried dishes
For example, the fat content of fried vegetables is similar to that of tomato sauce pasta or red clam sauce pasta.
But no Chinese food is like life.
Threatened as fetucini Alfredo.
Compared with the 97 grams of Alfredo, even 76 grams of kung pao chicken became thinner.
The saturated fat content of Morchella has quadrupled. -
Because it could be four times as much as your next bypass.