Fast food challenges anyone hoping to make reasonable dietary choices. Some restaurants offer smarter choices — even at the evil, greedy McEmpire, I can order a salad. In fact, when willing to wander from my predominantly vegetarian diet, I can always order a Happy Meal with Diet Coke. The burger and small fries in a Happy Meal add up to just 490 calories … and I get a toy, to boot.
Someone at Fazoli’s, however, practices the fine art of food sabotage — providing choices that sound healthy (or could even be healthy, if prepared with some common sense), but which contain egregious amounts of fat and possess unreasonably high calorie counts.
Fazoli’s nutritional chart claims “The fresh food at Fazoli’s offers a hearty and healthful alternative to fast-food fare.” How can a submarine sandwich with 59 grams of fat and 1150 calories be healthful? A 1500 calorie sampler platter may be hearty … but healthful?
So what about the pasta? How about spaghetti with meatballs (1020 calories, 42 grams of fat) or fettuccine with alfredo sauce sauce (800 calories, 22 grams of fat)?
So maybe a salad? Maybe the pasta salad, with its 600 calories and 26 grams of fat?
How about a breadstick? Fazoli’s offers unlimited breadsticks. Each one contains 6 grams of fat and 140 calories.
Or take the tomato panini sandwich (as I did, for lunch, just yesterday): a little bread, a little tomato, a little cheese. I expected a meat-free sandwich containing mostly bread and veggies to be a smart choice. A quick glance at the nutrition information on the Fazoli’s site, however, reveals my sandwich packed a walloping 43 grams of fat and 720 calories!
For the total calories I consumed in one sandwich and one breadstick, I could have eaten any one of the following:
– four Kit-Kat candy bars, or four boxes of Goobers chocolate-covered peanuts, or eight Reese’s peanut butter cups
– six servings of Baskin Robbins’ chocolate ice cream
– four slices of Papa John’s pizza
– seven (!) Morningstar Farms basil pizza burgers
Hmmm … wonder how the Fazoli’s folks will respond if I use their Contact Us link to ask just how high-fat, high-calorie choices can be positioned as healthy?
PS: An update — Fazoli’s “Contact Us” people evidently consider that “Contact Us” link to be exactly what it says … since it allows me to contact them, but apparently prompts no follow-up whatsoever. They never replied.
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