Worst "FREE" Foods

If you're looking to lose a few pounds before the summer, this is a must read. While I do agree that if you eat healthy all week, you should treat yourself on the weekend, I do not support the theory of a cheat DAY. Why bust your butt all week to blow (and gain it all back) on the weekends?? Problem is that a lot of the time you don't realize you are "blowing" it. The weekend hits and you're ready for a glass of wine. Or three. You meet friends out at a restaurant. You then mindlessly devour the basket of chips during coversation. You've had a stressful week so you resort to the "bottomless" option on the menu because "you deserve it." And at the end of the day, you've consumed more calories than you did all week. Without even knowing it.

According to "Eat This, Not That," research reveals that some of the worst dietary sins aren’t ordered at all. They just come to your table for free! Plenty of mischievous food peddlers are happy to give you free food - food that’s certain to fatten you up plenty, if not land you in a big black cauldron. Whether it’s “bottomless” buckets or “endless” entrees or the breadsticks and salad at Olive Garden, freebies almost always consist of high-fat, high-carbohydrate munchies that won’t fill you up. After all, the restaurant wants you to buy more food - but will fill you out.

Here are some "free" examples that I would highly recommend shoving to the other side of the table, before you create a dietary fairy tale of your own:

WORST "FREE" RESTAURANT FOOD #6: Fazoli’s Garlic Breadsticks
1 breadstick
150 calories
7 g fat (1.5 g saturated)
290 mg sodium
20 g carbohydrates

These free, unlimited breadsticks are a signature part of the Fazoli’s dining experience. Folks seem to love ’em: Googling “Fazoli’s breadsticks recipe” returns more than 3,000 results. And at only 150 calories each, how bad could they be? Well, each breadstick is the caloric equivalent of more than 7 Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate Kisses. Eating one is a sensible indulgence—but try to eat just one!

WORST "FREE" RESTAURANT FOOD #5: Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits
1 biscuit
150 calories
8 g fat (2.5 g saturated fat)
350 mg sodium
16 g carbohydrates

These Red Lobster staples come free with any entrée—and you can have as many as you want. Red Lobster’s website boasts of serving “almost 1.1 million” Cheddar Bay Biscuits every day. Add two of them to your Parrot Isle Jumbo Coconut Shrimp and your already-sizeable meal (880 calories) balloons to the caloric equivalent of more than a half-dozen Krispie Kreme glazed donuts! That said, keep far from Cheddar Bay, and Red Lobster is actually a nutritional safe harbor: Its menu is consistently one of the best in the country among chain restaurants.

WORST "FREE" RESTAURANT FOOD #4: Ruby Tuesday Endless Fries
396 calories
18 g fat
1,389 mg sodium
50 g carbohydrates

If you order a burger at Ruby Tuesday, you automatically get fries on the side—with infinite refills. A bargain, right? Sure, for your tailor: He’ll be making a lot of extra dough letting out your pants. A single side of the chain's fries has more calories than a McDonald’s cheeseburger! That means every time you ask for a refill, you’re getting an additional visit from Mayor McCheese. And Ruby Tuesday doesn’t report saturated fat levels—a warning flag for those who like to know what, exactly, they’re putting in their bodies.

WORST "FREE" RESTAURANT FOOD #3: On the Border Chips and Salsa
430 calories
22 g fat (4 g saturated)
52 g carbohydrates
460 mg sodium

Chips and salsa: Who could eat Mexican food without it? At On the Border, the answer should be you. This free starter has more calories than three White Castle sliders. That’s no way to start your meal anywhere, let alone at a restaurant where every single enchilada dish will cost you at least 1,000 calories. Good things come to those who wait: Eschewing the chips and sticking to your order will get you across this Border with less baggage around your midsection.

WORST "FREE" RESTAURANT FOOD #2: Denny's Unlimited Pancake Stack
Buttermilk Pancakes with Maple-Flavored Syrup (2 pancakes)
473 calories
4 g fat (0.5 g saturated)
1,196 mg sodium
103 g carbohydrates

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. They don't say, “Eat as much as humanly possible for breakfast.” And yet you’d think that’s what Denny’s has in mind with this deal. Just two buttermilk pancakes will cost you more calories than four full servings of Breyers Smooth & Dreamy Dark Chocolate Velvet ice cream—double or triple that, and you’ve ruined your diet for the day without paying a cent. The Denny’s press release announcing this promotion brags about the “value” they’re providing Americans: Not Americans who value their bodies!

THE #1 WORST "FREE" RESTAURANT FOOD: Olive Garden Bottomless Salad and Breadsticks
Garden-Fresh Salad (1 serving with dressing)
350 calories
26 g fat (4.5 g saturated)
1,930 mg sodium
22 g carbohydrates

Breadstick (1 with garlic butter spread)
150 calories
2 g fat (0 g saturated)
400 mg sodium
28 g carbohydrates

Olive Garden wins the battle of the fattening freebies by a mile. The minute you sit down, you’re staring at bowls of bottomless breadsticks and “garden” salad. Bottomless, however, doesn’t describe what you’ll look like if you spend too much time grazing in the Garden. Just one serving of each will give you 25 percent of your day’s caloric intake, before you’ve taken your first bite of your actual meal. But wait: Aren’t salads “healthy”? Not in this Garden: The free salad alone has almost a full day’s worth of sodium. Unfortunately, Olive Garden is far from the only restaurant that’s really a dietary minefield.