The Pasta Napoletana. Image: The Cheesecake Factory via Instagram
The Cheesecake Factory has won the dubious honor of taking two awards at the annual Xtreme Eating Awards, which singles out American restaurant chains that serve the most calorific and heart-stopping meals in the biz.
One of its biggest offending dishes is their Pasta Napoletana, a single dish that contains more calories than the daily recommended intake for a woman, and clocks in at just 200 calories shy of the recommended intake for a man.
That’s because the plate of pasta is topped with Italian sausage, pepperoni, meatballs and bacon, then bathed in cream and butter.
The average daily recommended calories is about 2,000 for a woman and 2,500 for a man.
The Cheesecake Factory was also dinged for its Flying Gorilla, a spiked chocolate banana milkshake that contains nearly half the number of daily recommended calories for women at 950 calories.
“Leave it to America’s chain restaurant industry to market a stack of pancakes as a side dish, or to lard up quesadillas and pasta with pizza toppings, or to ruin a perfectly good sweet potato,” said senior nutritionist Lindsay Moyer in a statement.
“These meals are extreme, but even the typical dishes served at restaurants are a threat to Americans’ health because they increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and more,” Moyer added.
The Xtreme Eating Awards are organized by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).
Other restaurants singled out for their artery-clogging, unnecessarily greasy offerings include IHOP, Buffalo Wild Wings and Chili’s.
But the title of the most calorific meal goes to the Texas Roadhouse’s 16oz Prime Rib meal, which comes with a loaded, marshmallow and caramel sauce-topped sweet potato and a Caesar salad. Combined, the meal contains a whopping 2,820 calories, 72 grams of fat (the average recommended daily intake is 20 grams of saturated fat) and 5330 milligrams of sodium, more than double the recommended daily intake. JB
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