McDonalds & Burger King are Healthier than Applebees, Chilli’s & Ruby Tuesday
January 30, 2008 By Matthew Paulson
After the release of the documentary Super Size Me, there was not a shadow of a doubt in our nation’s collective minds that the food we eat from McDonalds on a weekly basis was any bit healthy. We spend a lot of time demonizing fast food restaurants for the unhealthy products we voluntarily purchase from them, but did you know there is are restaurants that are much less healthy for you than the major chain fast food restaurants? It turns out that many of our nation’s upscale restaurants, places such as Applebees and Chilli’s are actually a lot less healthy for you than if you were to go down to McDonalds and get your favorite meal.
Our nation’s finer eateries are much less healthy for us because they offer such substantial portions, often well more than any of us should reasonably eat for one meal. At McDonalds if you order a hamburger and fries, you’ll eat a combined 630 calories. If you go to Ruby Tuesday and order their “Ruby’s Classic Burger” and a side of fries, you’ll eat a whopping 1,372 calories! If you go to Chilli’s and order their “Oldtimer Burger” and an order of fries, you’ll be taking in 1,320 calories!
Applebees doesn’t even post their nutritional facts on their website for their regular menu. Their website claims that having so many locations and vendors would make it “extremely difficult to obtain nutritional information on our items.” It seems that all of the other major restaurants in this country were able to come up with reasonable estimates of how many calories are in their food, what makes it so much more difficult for Applebees to provide this data? Is it perhaps that their regular menu items might not be very healthy at all?
We expect burgers and fries not to be healthy for us, but what about things such as pasta’s and salads? It turns out that Ruby Tuesday’s Carolina Chicken Salad contains a whopping 1022 calories and their Club House Salad has 896 calories, and that’s without any dressing. Throw some ranch one on of those and you’re easily adding 100 additional calories. Chili’s “Crispy Chicken Salad” comes in at a 810 calories and their “Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad with dressing” comes in at 1,010 calories!
Eating out at these major chain restaurants is just not healthy any way you put it. Fortunately there are a few things you can do to make it a bit healthier. Consider only eating half of your meal and taking the rest home with you for lunch the next day. This will spread out the calories over two meals rather than gorging yourself at one sitting. You could also split a meal with the person you’re going to eat with. It will cut your bill in half and get rid of a lot of the calories. You can skip on the Soda or any other beverage besides water, that’ll save you $1.50 off your bill and save you a few hundred calories.
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November 8th, 2007 at 9:00 am
So you think these crappy restaurants are fine dining? Soda isn’t a proper noun, so don’t capitalize it when it’s not at the beginning of a sentence, OK? And “pastas” doesn’t need an apostrophe. Learn English before you go spouting off.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:20 am
shut up you silly grammar nazi
this article does everyone a service and provides useful information, despite the incorrect capitalization of the word soda
or do you like getting fatter eating at these restaurants that don’t declare their ridiculously unbalanced nutritional information
get a life
November 8th, 2007 at 9:36 am
First comment is right, they’re about as far from “fine dining” as you can get. However, I was still surprised how calorie-laden they were, so interesting article.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Where in heaven’s name did so many Americans get this foolish notion that “unhealthy” and “high calorie” are synonymous? While I would never be found dead eating in either a McDonald’s or an Applebees, if I had to choose the latter would be the clearly more “healthy” option, as they would be bound to offer options that were at least slightly less saturated with dangerous chemicals than the offerings at McDonald’s…calories in and of themselves are purely a numbers game, and frankly, if you finish off one of those disturbingly large burgers and the accompanying huge plate of fries and don’t realize you have had nearly a day’s worth of calories, you need to rethink your dependence on nutritional info pamphlets. Try listening to your body.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Applebees, et al offer more choices. Super Size Me used the same silly arguments you’re using. He ate the worst stuff on the McDonalds menu and he ate it every single day. Nobody does that.
Furthermore,while hamburgers are popular food, these places have a vast array of salads and more heart healthy fare than any fast food joint.
As Kev313 puts it, calories and unhealthy are two different things. It’s unhealthy to eat too many calories a day, on a daily basis. It’s not unhealthy once in awhile.
How many people eat at Chilis and Applebees every single day and eat their worst foods? Maybe some people might, but they are outliers.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Don’t forget sodium. Even the salad at a sit-down place will have plenty of sodium in it because they pre-prepare a lot of their vegetables in the morning and sprinkle with salt to keep them fresh all day.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Can we clarify here? You are comparing what you call a “hamburger” at McDs, but how often does any person walk into McDs and get a simple hamburger. With all the marketing crap, it’s more likely that someone will walk out with some triple quarter pounder monstrosity. Last time I tried to order just a cheeseburger, the guy really pushed me to get the $.99 double (”it’s 2x the food for $.10 more). Even McDonalds salads have the same problems as those you mentioned from the other locations.
I’m not going to say that these other places are “healither” and I like the content of your article, but McDonalds is no saint.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Not fair comparison. You’re just looking at calories.
Besides, for an adult, 1000 calories for lunch is the ideal.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
“Upscale”? Tell me you’re joking.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
It is a lot easier to find something healthy at most of the sit-down chains than at McDonalds. Try the Black Bean soup at Chili’s or the Fiesta Lime Chicken Appleby’s (especially if you box half of it up for leftovers). If you’re environmentally consious try bringing your own container. You get a few looks, but so did the first person driving a Prius.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
I’d like to offer that Applebee’s does offer a Weight Watchers menu, complete with Points values and when I’ve eaten there, they are VERY amendable to cooking food the way I want it, no oils, butter.
I’d also like to observe that at any restaurant, upscale or fast food, nobody is forcing you to eat the whole portion. Since learning good portion control, I listen to my body and stop eating when I’m not hungry anymore. Simple. It’s also easy, and a sign of personal responsibility, for one to make good choices for themselves, or take responsibility for poor choices.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
our nation’s upscale restaurants, places such as Applebees and Chilli’s
Applebee’s, Ruby’s, Chili’s, etc are hardly upscale dining establishments. It’s just larger portions of the same greasy products the fast-food places serve, with marketing campaigns to trick us into thinking they serve “real” food.
I would much rather eat at McDonalds or Jack over those mega chain pub-food places.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
While those restaurants are clearly not healthy, I would hesitate to describe them as less healthy based on your info. First, you should be comparing equal quantities of food. Also, there is a lot more that makes food unhealthy than just total fat content. What about other ingredients, sugar, beef quality, oils used, etc? Again, Applebees and the rest may still be less healthy, but you haven’t shown that here.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Wow, scary, huh? Of course, we could all just eat at home and not have to worry about it
November 8th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Wait, let me get this straight. You’re saying that when you eat massive portions, you intake more calories? No way!
The amount of calories in a plate of food has nothing at all to do with that food’s nutritional value. A meaningful comparison would contain how much good stuff (vitamins, protein, etc) and bad stuff (trans fats, cholsterol, HFC syrup, etc) is found in each oz. of food from the restaurants.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
To Dave:
Where are you getting your information? I’ve worked in many chain restaurants (Chili’s, Outback, and Logan’s Roadhouse to name a few), as well as local restaurants, and not one place has sprinkled salt on the salad to keep it fresh. Usually the salad comes in bags, you only open what you need so the rest stays fresh. Any sodium in a salad would come from the dressing, cheese, bacon, croutons, etc.
November 8th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
who orders a burger, drink and fries at mcdonalds? i usually order something like 1 big mac, a couple of cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, a milkshake… easily more calories than a regular meal at chilis
November 8th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Im currently bulking, so I eat about 4000 calories a day.. This makes my job easier! Off for a 1300 calorie burger! yummm!
November 8th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
no shit?
of course its gonna 1000+ calories do people look at the size of the portions?
hell you can can the size in half and that would still be a good meal giving you about 600 calories, which is fair game for a nice dinner.
November 8th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
lol @ Applebee’s and Chili’s being “upscale”. What a terribly written piece.
November 8th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
For all the negative feedback on this piece I would like to add a postive. Go to any Weight Watchers meeting and they will tell you the same thing. These chain restaurants are a terrible place to eat because the portion size is way too big. If you follow their points system you pretty much eat your entire daily points in one sitting. People are overweight because they eat more food than they should not just because the food has a lot of fat and calories.
December 8th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
In regards to James’ comment: Applebees, et al offer more choices. Super Size Me used the same silly arguments you’re using. He ate the worst stuff on the McDonalds menu and he ate it every single day. Nobody does that.
I worked for McDonald’s when I was in college and for a couple years afterwards…You’d be surprised the number of people who not only come in every single day, but the number of people who will eat all three of their meals there every single day. It’s kind of sad, really.
January 26th, 2008 at 2:24 am
I have been on a diet for a year now,lost nearly fifty pounds and I like to treat myself once in a while to a meal and drink out with friends. We went to Ruby Tuesdays and I ordered a turkey burger w/ mushrooms and swiss cheese…figured it cant be worse than something fried or a beef burger with bacon….OVER 1000 CALORIES AND OVER 65 GRAMS OF FAT. I know these resteraunts dont advertise themselves as being healthy,but..cmon! McDonalds or Burger King does sound like a healthier alternative at this point.
February 10th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Thank you for submitting your post to Carnival Of Tips!
I seem to recall one of the major chains allowing you to order “half” portions (of course, you were getting the bigger bang for your buck by ordering the larger). Anyone know which one this is (or was?)
March 28th, 2008 at 9:37 am
i dont know about you guys but GO TACO BELL
March 28th, 2008 at 9:39 am
i like poop
March 28th, 2008 at 9:41 am
PANCAKES!!
March 28th, 2008 at 9:42 am
I like Taco Time Homez! Mmm Nacho Burrito
March 28th, 2008 at 9:44 am
isnt the big mac like 1 million callories and thats not good on my thunder thighs
July 7th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
This article is very true; however, the burger’s at these places are much better and bigger. That makes it worth it!