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?)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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