Applebee's is a favorite chain restaurant for anyone who wants a decent meal at a good price.
It's great for families, casual lunches with friends, or after-work drinks with colleagues.
But the next time you head to Applebee's, make sure you avoid these menu items.
Sodium is a necessary mineral that helps your body with everything from muscle and nerve function
to balancing body fluids and hydration. But when you consume too much sodium, you increase your
risk for high blood pressure, kidney damage, heart disease, stroke, and other maladies.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average adult in good health
should consume a maximum of 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day. But most Americans consume
more than 3,400 mg of sodium daily. This is important information to keep in mind when
considering Applebee's fajitas. If you were to single-handedly consume a Loaded Steak & Chicken
Fajita meal from Applebee's, for example, you'd be eating 2,700 more milligrams of sodium than the
CDC's daily recommendation. Simply put, that's not exactly the best thing to do to your body.
A lot of people eat at Applebee's primarily because it has many affordable options that
allow them to enjoy a nice night out without a bill that ruins the whole evening. So if
you're keeping a close watch on your budget but you still want to eat out occasionally,
you should avoid Applebee's meals with grilled chicken breast as their anchor.
Otherwise, you really won't be getting your money's worth.
"Hey, money!"
As an Applebee's manager revealed in a Reddit AMA in 2007,
the chain pays an average price of around 30 cents per chicken breast used in these meals,
many of which then sell for nearly $20. Granted, you also have to take into account the veggies,
rice, potatoes, and other sides that come with that chicken. Overall though, you can bet on a
meal that sells for $18.99 being a markup of more than fifty times what the restaurant is paying for
its ingredients. Compare that to retail pricing, which in general offers a two-time markup over a
company's wholesale prices. On the other hand, at least you're not doing the cooking or the dishes,
so that is definitely worth something, though probably not a fifty-times markup.
Applebee's Loaded Baked Potato Soup may be delicious comfort food, but it's not
comforting to hear some of its nutrition stats, which will more than max out many of your daily
recommended values. This soup is an average of 600 calories per serving, with more than
300 of those coming from fat. It has 36 grams of saturated fat, which is 16 grams more than
doctors recommend per day for the average adult. And while this soup does taste great,
when you realize what's behind that taste, you might just want to opt for something else.
In order to create a batch of the loaded baked potato soup to serve four to six people,
the ingredients include 2/3 cup butter, 7 cups milk, 10 to 12 strips bacon,
1 and 1/4 cups shredded mild cheddar cheese, and 1 cup sour cream. There
are also of course some potatoes, though it's the cheese and the cream and the
bacon that are providing most of the taste. And we can't go without mentioning sodium,
of which there are 1,290 milligrams. That's a lot of salt for just one soup.
The words "salad" and "wrap" call to mind light,
healthy fare that you can enjoy without guilt or self-loathing. But here's a wake-up call:
you would need to eat three Big Macs from McDonald's plus a handful of fries
to equal the 1,800 calories stuffed into Applebee's Oriental Chicken Salad Wrap.
Granted, this meal does come with a side of fries and a vinaigrette sauce that add to the
calorie count. But no matter how you look at it, this is a terribly unhealthy option. Worst
of all is the fact that this meal may seem like a healthy choice, when in fact a plate of ribs or a
bacon cheeseburger has fewer calories and is less fat-filled. If you must have a chicken salad wrap,
opt instead for the Oriental Grilled Chicken Salad Wrap, which cuts out more than 100 calories.
Although, it's even higher in sodium, so it's not exactly the best option either.
You should unequivocally avoid Applebee's frozen lemonades. This is particularly
true if you want to avoid contributing to arterial wall inflammation, increased chance
of heart failure or stroke, increased chance of diabetes and cancer, restlessness, poor sleep,
and the other many negative side effects of consuming too much sugar. These frozen treats
range from 52 to 76 grams of sugar, meaning that even the lowest-sugar option has double
the daily expert-recommended dose for a woman and 15 grams more than the recommended dose for men.
For some perspective, a serving of Coca-Cola Classic at Applebee's has 26 grams of sugar.
So that's already more sugar than many people should have, even though it's nearly three times
less sugar compared to the Strawberry Frozen Lemonade. If you absolutely must have something
sweet when you're at Applebee's, stick with the fruit smoothies, which at least have some
real fruit in them, although the sugar content is still comparable to the frozen lemonades.
"One lemonlade! Thank you!”
Chances are you've heard that it's healthier to eat five to six smaller meals throughout
the course of the day than it is to gorge on three large meals at breakfast, lunch,
and dinner. The science isn't exactly clear on that claim,
though experts agree that if you eat healthy foods and watch your caloric intake,
when you eat and how many daily meals you have doesn't matter as much. Though it is worth noting
that intermittent daily fasting does seem to have some notable benefits for weight loss goals.
What all medical science and nutrition experts can agree on is that consuming
around three-quarters of your total daily calories in one sitting is not
exactly the best way to be healthy. So if you order a pasta entree from Applebee's,
you should really cut it in half and take 50 percent of it to go. When you take all the
calories in their six currently available pasta dishes, you end up with an average
calorie count of 1,400 calories per entree. That should be enough to stop you right there,
so we won't go into the nitty-gritty details about the fat or sodium content. But if you absolutely
must know the scary truth, you can head to the Nutrition Facts section of Applebee's website.
Health experts advise that the average adult in good health should consume between
20 percent and 35 percent of their daily calories in the form of fats.
For those of us on a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet, that means between 44 and 77 grams of daily fat.
So let's combine those two and come up with an average of 60.5 grams of fat.
That's bad news for Applebee's Hand-Battered Fish & Chips, which load you up with 95 grams of fat.
That flies in the perception that many people have of fish as a low-fat food.
And it certainly can be, when it doesn't involve deep-frying battered fish. You can opt for the
nine-grams-of-fat Blackened Cajun Salmon as a far healthier option. But do be aware that
it may leave you a bit peckish, as the battered fish dish has 1,430 calories, while the Blackened
Cajun Salmon has all of 240. But there are always fries and breadsticks available to fill you up,
although it's worth noting that breadsticks aren't exactly the healthiest option either.
As we've already discovered with the frozen lemonade beverages, too much sugar isn't
exactly ideal for your health. And those aren't even Applebee's most sugary drinks. Whereas the
worst frozen lemonade offender has 76 grams of sugar, when it comes to the shakes, they top out
at 110 grams of sugar for the Strawberry Shake. It also packs in 38 grams of fat,
23 of which are saturated fat, which is more than the entire recommended daily limit all by itself.
It's also probably a good idea to skip the Decadent Shakes based on their calorie count as
well. Their names don't lie, as the lowest-calorie Decadent Shake, Vanilla, has 730 calories.
The Strawberry Decadent Shake clocks in at 920, or nearly half the standard daily recommended value
for your entire diet. In just one cup! And that's in a treat that you'll most likely be enjoying
after eating an entire meal that already put you over just about every daily nutritional metric.
Despite all these health warnings, the good news is that there are a
number of perfectly healthy salads you can get at Applebee's. That is to say,
salads that are low in calories, low in fat, moderate in sodium,
and so on. The bad news is that these are all merely different takes on the house Side Salad,
like the House Salad with Honey Balsamic dressing or the House Salad with fat free Italian dressing.
"What does it take to be an Applebee's salad?"
If you want to go bigger and order one of the entree salads, don't kid yourself into
thinking you're making a healthy choice. Fully half of the main course salads on Applebee's
menu have more than 1,000 calories, and several have more than 1,500 calories,
including the Oriental Chicken. That one will set you all the way back 1,560 calories.
Its name may sound reasonable for healthy eaters, but don't be fooled. And furthermore,
while you may not think of salads as high in fat, it turns out that in all
but two of Applebee's entree salads, more than half of the calories come from fat.
Applebee's customers have spoken, and the truth is clear: two out of three diners
recommend that you don't get the Southwestern Steak Salad, which was downvoted by that margin
on the polling site Ranker.com. And in a scathing TripAdvisor review, one patron had this to say:
"When [the Southwestern Steak Salad] came to the table the presentation
completely turned me off. It looked like something I can make at home.
The lettuce was wilted and the meat was room temp. Very disappointing."
Another TripAdvisor reviewer juxtaposed a gorgeous image of the salad as advertised by the restaurant
next to the actual meal that they were served, which looked like a horrific pile of wilted
plant mess beside a chunk of C-grade meatstuffs. One customer on Twitter even claimed that they
ordered the salad and the restaurant forgot the steak. Sometimes pictures really do say
a thousand words. Or in this case, perhaps only four words are necessary: Never order this meal.
"Never again, never again!"
You might think that most current and even former Applebee's employees would
try to speak favorably of the food this affable chain offers.
But there's one dish that one particular former employee implored people to never ever order:
the Bourbon Street Steak. As the ex-employee put in an anecdote on Reddit,
"Don't get a bourbon steak from Applebee's. It's like a black licorice tasting steak.
It makes no sense. I'm convinced that every one of
those I ever cooked was someone trying it for the first time."
The employee continued,
"I remember one time we accidentally cooked an extra one, and we offered it to a waitress
to eat. She took one bite and immediately spit it out. She kept asking us all night "what did
you guys put on it?!" she was convinced that we had put something nasty on it
to mess with her. We didn't do anything to it...that's just how bad they were."
And this was from someone generally complimentary of their time working at
Applebee's and with no vested interest in turning people away from the chain.
So keep that in mind the next time you head to your local Applebee's.
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