The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

A couple of weeks ago, I figured my 2-day weight gain must have been related to the Chicken Parmigiana I ate for lunch one day. I’m a curious person by nature, and becoming much more interested in knowing the nutrition information for the foods I eat, so I decided to investigate the caloric value for my meal.

I started my search on Olive Garden’s website. Sadly, after drilling through the site map and searching for nutrition information, it appears Olive Garden’s site lists only menu items and descriptions, but no nutrition information. I recalled Consumerist had posted a huge table of restaurants’ nutrition information and checked it to make sure I wasn’t missing it - turns out they came up empty-handed too.

Recalling that Starbucks prints a pamphlet available at stores, I decided to visit my local Olive Garden. I received this one-page, front-and-back pamphlet titled “Garden Fare” that listed only “low fat” menu items:

Surely, a restaurant chain as large as Olive Garden would have more nutrition information available than this paltry disclosure! I called the Guest Relations number listed on the pamphlet (1-800-331-2729) and asked the person who answered the phone if they have more nutrition information available than what’s listed on this pamphlet - no, the Guest Relations person replied. I asked if she had nutrition information available for the Chicken Parmigiana I previously ate - no, she replied, the pamphlet listed all the nutrition information she had available. I wonder what kinds of questions these people are supposed to be able to answer?

Olive Garden breadsticks

So, this pamphlet is all I’ve got to work with. There are some interesting things to glean from it - for instance, the breadsticks that are automatically left at every table is not listed. A glance at calorie-count.com lists the breadsticks with 140 calories per breadstick. Holy crap! Remember that Subway’s 6″ Italian bread loaf has 200 calories, and there’s gotta be at least 3x, if not 4x, the amount of bread in a 6″ loaf. Breadsticks are one of those uncounted calories - they appear, you munch while talking and waiting for the real food. At 140 calories per breadstick, you can’t afford not to count these. Wonder what ingredients are lurking in Olive Garden breadsticks…

Here’s something else that’s interesting - they list Italian dressing, but not the nutrition information. Serving size is listed as 2 fluid ounces, which equals 4 tablespoons. Again turning to calorie-count, I see Olive Garden’s regular dressing is 90 calories per 2 tblsp, or 180 calories per serving. CalorieKing lists Olive Garden’s light dressing at 37 calories per “serving” (I’m assuming this is 2 tblsp), or 74 per serving. Compare this to something like Kraft’s Zesty Italian at 109 calories per 2 tblsp, and Olive Garden’s isn’t that bad. They do define their serving size as twice a normal serving size, but the salads are big enough to share anyway. That is, assuming their serving size of salad is one bowl…

And that Chicken Parmigiana? No nutrition information. The closest I can find is CalorieKing’s listing for Eggplant Parmigiana, which lists a serving at 793 calories. 1 oz of eggplant is 10 calories; 1 oz of chicken is 47 calories. The chicken pieces were definitely larger than my palm, so I’d guess they were roughly 8 oz each - 80 calories of eggplant versus 376 calories of chicken. Substitute chicken for eggplant in CalorieKing’s listing for Eggplant Parmigiana, and you’ve got a meal with 1089 calories - and that may not even include the pasta! Even eating half of my meal, I consumed 220 calories plus the pasta - no wonder I gained weight two days in a row. And to think I used to eat at least two breadsticks, half of a salad, an appetizer and an entire meal - easily 1800 calories in one sitting.

Definitely not conducive to my new healthy lifestyle.

Update - it appears Olive Garden lists the Garden Fare pamphlet on their site at
http://www.olivegarden.com/menus/garden_fare/. How about giving us all your nutritional information, Olive Garden? What do you have to hide?

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Wheat bread is better than white. Right? Apparently not, especially at Subway.

I did a little bit of research before, but I’ve since gotten a lot more curious. My wife and I have always gotten sandwiches on wheat bread, operating under the assumption that it’s healthier. I decided to take a look and see if that’s actually true.

Here’s Subway’s nutrition information for bread, with white and wheat highlighted:

And Subway’s ingredients list for white and wheat breads:

ITALIAN (WHITE) BREAD
Enriched flour (wheat flour, barley malt, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, sugar, contains less than 2% of the following: soybean oil, yeast, salt, wheat protein isolate, wheat gluten, dough conditioners (acetylated tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides, ammonium sulfate, calcium sulfate, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, potassium iodate, amylase [enzymes]), sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, mineral oil. Contains soy and wheat.

WHEAT BREAD
Enriched flour (flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, whole wheat flour, high fructose corn syrup, wheat gluten, contains less than 2% of the following: wheat bran, yeast, salt, soybean oil, dough conditioner (acetylated tartaric acid esters of mono-and diglycerides, ammonium sulfate, calcium sulfate, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, potassium iodate, amylase (enzymes)], cracked wheat, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, caramel color (contains sulfites), dried honey preparation (honey powder, invert sugar, wheat starch, soy bran flour, silicon dioxide [anti-caking]), mineral oil. Contains soy and wheat.

Immediately, three things jump out at me:

1. The wheat bread has high-fructose corn syrup. As the medical community studies HFCS more, we are coming to understand it’s connection with obesity, due largely to how it interacts with insulin, ghrelin and leptin.
2. The wheat bread has the same calories, more fat and more carbs.
3. The first ingredient listed is refined flour.

Suddenly, Subway wheat bread is looking less like a healthier alternative to Subway white bread. What about the wrap? Ten less calories, twice the fat, five less carbs, the same refined flour and a bunch of ingredients I can’t pronounce. I’m sticking to the salads. (I wonder what those ingredients are? I’ll have to look into it.)

Eating at Subway is a good example of why it’s important to exercise awareness of what you eat - Subway markets itself on being the “healthy alternative” to fast food, with healthier menu items than other restaurants and the misleading name of the franchise owner, Doctor’s Associates Inc. However, if you simply buy into the marketing and assume Subway is the “healthy alternative”, you can easily make some mindless, habitual choices and build a sandwich with more calories than a Big Mac. For instance, their nutrition information lists sandwiches with “6 grams of fat or less”. My wife likes the veggie sandwiches, so we’ll take that as an example:

She likes her sandwich with provolone cheese (+50 calories), mayonnaise (+110 calories/tblsp, we’ll assume one tblsp although I’m sure in reality it’s more), and vinegar/oil (+45/tsp, we’ll assume 2 tsp for +90 calories). Let’s compare caloric values:

• Plain 6″ veggie sandwich: 230 calories
• My wife’s 6″ veggie sandwich: 480 calories, more than double a plain sandwich
• Who eats a footlong at once? You’re consuming 960 calories
• And a Big Mac? 540 calories.
• Other 6″ plain Subway sandwich choices for comparison:
  • Cold Cut Combo: 410 calories
  • Meatball Marinara: 560 calories
  • Chipotle Steak & Cheese: 530 calories
  • Tuna: 530 calories (I thought the Tuna sandwich was supposed to be one of the healthy ones!

I don’t want to sound like I’m ragging on Subway - to borrow a phrase from Bill Mahrer, “I kid the Doctor’s Associates!” I realize that it’s your choice to not add mayonnaise and cheese to an otherwise healthy-ish meal. I realize that no matter the caloric value, a Subway veggie sandwich is probably at least a little healthier than a Big Mac, if only for the fact there’s a few raw veggies between the bread slices. I do, however, think it’s important to investigate the truth behind marketing when Subway claims to be the healthy alternative. You can’t maintain a healthy lifestyle and make healthy food choices when you don’t educate yourself about the food you eat.

I’m still curious about those bread ingredients. I think I’ll look into those next…