Sir, Please Step Away From the Chinese Buffet
Within a 2 mile radius of my house, I can count at least 5 Chinese restaurants and an additional 2 places claiming to be Chinese Super buffets. Personally, I love Chinese food and if I could, I would eat egg roles all day long while bathing in sweet and sour sauce. Ok, so that’s a slight exaggeration, but this is not.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest released some news yesterday, that we all know, but choose to ignore.
The typical Chinese restaurant menu is a sea of nutritional no-nos, a consumer group has found. A plate of General Tso’s chicken, for example, is loaded with about 40 percent more sodium and more than half the calories an average adult needs for an entire day.
The battered, fried chicken dish with vegetables has 1,300 calories, 3,200 milligrams of sodium and 11 grams of saturated fat.
That’s before the rice (200 calories a cup). And after the egg rolls (200 calories and 400 milligrams of sodium).
For example, let’s look at the ever popular Lemon Chicken:
Lemon Chicken, which is battered, deep-fried, and served with a sugary yellow sauce, has 1,400 calories and 13 grams of saturated fat. CSPI says that’s like eating three fried McChicken sandwiches plus a 32-oz. Coke at McDonald’s. Chicken with Black Bean Sauce has half the calories (700) but more sodium (3,800 mg) than any other dish CSPI analyzed.
No, I am not saying to eat at McDonald’s, I am saying that nutrition is something to always consider. While fast food chains are getting bombarded with bad press, the alternatives you turn to need to go under the magnifying glass as well.
For other examples you can check out CSPInet [via Yahoo News].
Photo by: misswired on Flickr
