If you're thinking Chinese cuisine, you probably have visions of egg rolls dancing in your
head.
But surprise!
Most of those deep-fried, Americanized house specials are pretty bad for you.
Hold on to your chopsticks, here's what to skip when you're ordering Chinese.
"I refuse to play your Chinese food mind games"
Sweet-and-sour chicken is one of those dishes that you probably won't find in China.
While sweet-and-sour sauces do exist, they're mostly eaten with fish, and served on the
side.
But Stateside, not only is the sauce itself extra sweet, considering it's drowning battered
and fried chicken, the amount of sugar you consume goes through the roof.
"Be like eating sweet or sour chicken."
"Ya, hehe"
"Oh!
What is this?"
"Sour chicken.
It's good right?"
A normal portion can net you over 1700 calories, and over 130 percent of your daily recommended
fat, and that doesn't even include a side of rice.
Egg rolls often play the role of doorman to the calorie palace that is your Chinese meal.
But while a single egg roll is just a 222-calorie treat, how many people can eat just one?
Sure, egg rolls do typically contain a few grams of protein.
But since that's coming from the meat that's also contributing to the 11 grams of fat your
egg roll is packing, it hardly makes it worth it.
"I feel like just walkin over there and takin some food off of somebody's plate."
"I'll tell ya what.
There's 50 bucks in it for ya if you do it."
You might think lemon chicken doesn't sound too bad.
After all, chicken is pretty healthy, and lemons are found in basically every healthy
"cleanse."
But a more accurate name for lemon chicken would be "battered fried chicken in lemony
sugar sauce."
"Give them a little piece, a taste."
"Oh, no, you don't have to do that, no, we're at dinner"
Check out any recipe for lemon chicken and you'll notice large quantities of oil, sugar,
and soy sauce.
And those are the healthier homemade versions.
Hit a restaurant, and those numbers top out around 1,500 calories and 75 grams of fat.
And as far as the lemon goes, its inclusion in the recipe actually helps to disguise the
sweet flavors of all the sugar you're eating.
If lemon chicken were a book, you definitely wouldn't wanna judge it by its healthy-ish
cover.
While it has fallen out of fashion, there was a time when chop suey was the most popular
dish to order in a Chinese-American restaurant.
In the '40s and '50s, neon signs would brightly boast that restaurants specialized in this
well-known dish.
"Leave it to the French to f—- up China's number one dish."
"It's not Chinese, it's American."
Rumored to have been invented in San Francisco, and based loosely on an authentic Chinese
dish, Americanized chop suey is a stir-fry of various meats and vegetables, tossed in
a clear, cornstarch-thickened sauce.
Since there's no standard recipe for chop suey, the dish can be whatever the house chef
says it is, and it's developed a reputation over the years for being a way to use up leftovers.
In fact, its very name comes from the Cantonese meaning for "odds and ends."
Fresh crab can fluctuate wildly in price depending on the season, or the harvest that particular
year.
Yet many Chinese restaurants seem to have plenty of crab-based dishes on the menu, at
reasonable prices, all year long.
How do they do it?
By serving you imitation crab.
"Crab masters"
Imitation crab has been around since the '70s.
It's basically made from cod fish that has been made into a paste, along with starches
and sugars.
It's fairly standard in Japanese restaurants too, if you've ever eaten a cheap California
roll, you've had imitation crab.
This type of crab meat has less protein than the real stuff, and often contains gluten.
"We made fish taste like crab."
The flavor is crab-like, but the texture and look of imitation crab is easy to distinguish
for anyone who actually wanted to eat the real thing.
"People should be able to tell real crab from fake crab.
You gotta be a moron if you can't tell the difference.
That's what I think."
If you're uncertain why this dish is included here, the answer is in the name.
Fried rice is usually made from white rice, which has the lowest nutritional value of
any rice, and is then thrown in a pan of oil and allowed to soak up the "goodness."
This process results in an oily, starchy, delicious, but totally unnecessary, calorie
load to your meal.
And when you've just polished off 800 calories of egg rolls, the last thing you need is several
hundred more on the side.
Replace the white rice with brown and you gain a little fiber, but…that doesn't change
the fact that it still gets fried.
"Whatever you say, Stove."
"It's Steve."