You may have read about this but Applebee's just won an Xtreme Eating Award from the Center for Science in the Public Interest for their Quesadilla Burger. The Kansas City Star's Steve Rosen described the Quesadilla Burger this way:
Take a bacon cheeseburger and insert it into a quesadilla. What do you get? A "monstrous marriage" of 1,820 calories, 46 grams of saturated fat, and 4,410 mg of sodium.Omigod! That is more calories than I eat in a day! Here is how Applebee's responded to the award:
"We provide our guests with a range of choices, from those that are better for you to those that are more indulgent, and guests have the option to customize their orders to better meet their individual needs."Well if you have an individual need to eat an 1,800-calorie fat burger, here is how much True Thai you could have had instead:
- 1 Thai vegetarian spring roll with dipping sauce (there are usually 2 in an order) [267 calories]
- 1 bowl of Tom Yum with shrimp (this is less soup than we usually serve) [86 calories]
- 1 order of chicken fried rice [405 calories]
- 1 order 7-Vegetable Rainbow Medley [474 calories]
- 1 order Pad Thai with shrimp [571 calories]
That's 1,803 calories for an appetizer, soup, fried rice and two entrees which all combined have only 7 grams of saturated fat vs. 46 for the Bacon Quesadilla artery-clogger, and 2,689 mg of sodium compared to 4,410 mg for the Applebee's Today Is A Good Day To Die Burger. (Half of our salt came from the soup, by the way. If you have to limit your salt do not order soup!)
And if you ate a cup of plain jasmine white rice instead of fried rice you would save another 177 calories, not to mention a fat gram and 600mg of salt.
I am not speaking as a restaurant owner now, I am speaking as a Public Health Nurse. DO NOT EAT QUESADILLA BURGERS! If the corresponding amount of Thai food would fill a bowl bigger than your head, maybe it's too much burger!
I also need to admit that True Thai has never spent any money to find out the exact calory counts for our dishes. With 80 items on the menu that many lab tests would bankrupt us, but these calorielab.com charts should be fairly close.
