Eating out salt, fat and calorie minefields from WebMD

I’ve been writing this week about a special issue of the WebMD newsletter dealing with eating out. One article got very specific about items to avoid as various fast-food outlets and what to buy instead.

Deep dish pizza--those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end. — Deep dish pizza–those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end.

I pointed out those substitutes all were too high in salt, as far as my diet is concerned. This post looks at another article entitled Worst Restaurant Meals.

Unfortunately these are not identified by where they are served. I can’t imagine why WebMD would not name names in this piece as it had done in the other, other than maybe it didn’t want to be accused of piling on bad news for the same outlets.

So you’ll just have to guess or avoid any menu item with a name in any way remotely sounding like the ones here.

There are few surprises here, Buffalo chicken salad with fried chicken on it starts the list which goes on to include a personal size deep dish pizza, french fries, french toast and bacon (how do the French stay so skinny with so many fattening dishes), and chicken fajitas (beware the sour cream and the salt in tortilla shells. I bring my own low-salt variety with me).

The deep dish pizza hit closest to home for me since Chicago is the home of deep dish. I often ate deep dish before my 2012 angioplasty. Since then, I’ve had it four times in three and a half years.

The personal size deep dish on the list has 2,300 calories, 164 grams of fat and 4,910 milligrams of sodium. Wow, I would eat much more than that in one sitting.

John