Weight Loss Lunch – Caesar Salad
It’s hard to find good lunch for “weight loss”, so today I tried Caeser Salad. The thing about salads is that they can be very, very tricky if you don’t pay attention. I guess this is common sense if you think about it – but if you have to eat out, take McDonald’s for example. You’re on a diet and you want to get something to go quick. You get up to the drive-through and immediately salads look like the most healthy option. If you get the salad with “crispy chicken” – you just infected your “weight loss” with more than 20 grams of fat (from the fried chicken) and 430 calories (probably without the dressing or croutons) according to McDonald’s Nutrition facts. The same page says that the Caesar dressing has 18 grams of fat alone and is 190 calories. So now your “healthy salad lunch” is 620 calories with a whopping 38 grams of fat. Guess what – a entire Big Mac has only 29 grams of fat and 540 calories. That’s right, an entire Big Mac sandwich is actually healthier than a McDonald’s Caesar salad with crispy chicken and Ceasar dressing. If you get that in a combo though – that’s another 38 grams of fat and another 500 calories. It’s strange to think that if you’re trying to eat 2,000 calories per day – that just a Big Mac and fries is half that isn’t it? It kinda puts things in perspective a bit.
So today at lunch, I had to get my glasses fixed. One of the screws fell out, and wearing them lopsided on my face isn’t one of my favorite things to do. Wearing prescription sunglasses, I went to get them fixed at lunch, and Boston Market happened to be in the same shopping plaza. I was thinking at the time – I had to get back to work and they have chicken and turkey, I should be able to get something. When I got inside at the checkout they had a big sign “summer healthy lunches”, and I thought – we’ll that’s gotta be better than eating turkey with gravy and stuffing (yum!), or the meatloaf with gravy I “used” to get when I ate at Boston Market.
So I ordered the “Caesar Salad with Chicken”. It looked pretty good, and I figured that the only bad thing was about it was the dressing. If that was the only fat I had for lunch – how bad could it be, right? Well, after lunch I checked the Boston Market web site, and another shocker. The salad itself wasn’t that bad, and the large helping of (non-breaded) chicken on the salad only has 1 gram of fat (glorious!). However, the little tiny little cup of dressing you get with the salad (an eigth of a cup maybe?) has (are you ready for this?) 38 grams of fat and 340 calories!! Just for that little cup of salad dressing!
It just goes to show ya – don’t look at things at face value, and just because something is advertised as “healthy” doesn’t mean it’s truthful at all. Granted I had a lighter lunch, but the topping made it no better than eating an entire Big Mac! If you want to lose weight, read labels, do research, and check things out in advance. I think I’m going to do a little research and find out (from all of their web sites) which fast food places (if any) have decent things to eat for people trying to lose weight on a diet!
