Cheesecake Factory on Food Porn List; Fattiest Restaurant Meals in America Revealed
The Center for Science in the Public Interest released its annual list of fatty restaurant dishes labeled mockingly as "food porn."
The organization made the announcement on Wednesday in the press release titled "Xtreme Eating 2013: Extremism Running Amok at America's Restaurant Chains."
The consumer-focused nonprofit group, which was established to help promote healthier eating, compiles an annual list of "food porn" as a means of showing the nutritional pitfalls in some meals provided by American restaurants.
Some of the top offenders were The Cheesecake Factory, IHOP and Uno Chicago Grill.
"It's as if IHOP, The Cheesecake Factory, Maggiano's Little Italy, and other major restaurant chains are scientifically engineering these extreme meals with the express purpose of promoting obesity, diabetes, and heart disease," said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson in a press release. "You'd think that the size of their profits depended on their increasing the size of your pants."
Many consumers may know that the meals they consume at restaurants are going to be high in calories. While some restaurants are more upfront about the nutritional information, not every menu in the nation has the caloric intake listed for each dish which is one of the group's main goals they want changed.
The list goes into detail about the selected meals.
One of the waistline expanding meals is the Cheesecake Factory bistro shrimp pasta, a dish consisting of "butter and cream sauce and topped with battered, fried shrimp," which has around 3,120 calories. The dish also comes loaded with 89 grams of saturated fat and 1,090 milligrams of sodium.
Another find was the peanut power plus grape smoothie from Smoothie King that had 1,460 calories and 22 teaspoons of sugar for a 40-ounce size.
"The most surprising one to me was the smoothie," CSPI senior nutritionist Jayne Hurley told CNN. "Smoothies have the illusion of being good for you, which I think is why it's important to warn people that the calories can skyrocket."
