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Wednesday, June 19, 2013
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Eating Healthy, Italian Style
By Alicia Butler
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RELATED TAGS:
Italian food Macaroni Grill Mediterranean Diet Olive Garden balanced diet calories dieting dining out healthy choices healthy eating pasta portion control weight loss
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Italian food Macaroni Grill Mediterranean Diet Olive Garden balanced diet calories dieting dining out healthy choices healthy eating pasta portion control weight loss
SPONSORED:
The only thing worse than purposely sabotaging your nutritional goal is finding out what you thought was a healthy alternative was actually worse for your body than the obvious food offenders. While counting calories, fat, and fiber in the grocery store can be a challenge, the real difficulty lies in the food eaten in restaurants. The first step in saving your diet from destruction is to determine the usual suspects. Anything made with cream and butter is an obvious pitfall. Take the Macaroni Grill's dinner sized portion of Chicken Alfredo. It has over 1,100 calories, 81 grams of fat, and a whopping 1200 mg of sodium. You'd get the same amount of caloric intake from eating four bowls of Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream. And as for the sodium? You might as well put on your sweatpants, call out of work, and get comfortable. You're going to be bloated for at least a week.
A healthy alternative is the Pollo Magro. This entre comes in at under 500 calories per serving. Unfortunately, the Macaroni Grill has only two heart-healthy items on their dinner entre menu and they do not list their nutritional information on their website. One of the worst offenders on their menu is probably their double macaroni and cheese, which weighs in at 1210 calories, 62 grams of fat and 3,250 mgs of sodium. Ouch. And this is marketed as an item that is "child-friendly?"
