From Bad to Worse

I found this from Lunch dot com and it can also be found on Digg somewhere at least.  The image basically shows a calorie, carb, and fat chart of an item found at various fast food and sit-down restaurant chains.

Now that I am on a diet, my daily calorie allowance according to MyNetDiary is about 2100 and that is for the entire day under the assumption of three meals - breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  What makes it more difficult in choosing what food options are available to me are the amounts of sugar (g) and sodium (mg) that I can intake.  That is the life of a panda that is pre-hypertension and pre-diabetic.

According to the image, the chart reads that a single serving of the Steak Burrito at Chipotle is about 1205 in calories, 53 g in fat, and 2670 mg in sodium.  Yikes!  Not only does that mean one burrito literally meant I only had about 800-900 calories to munch on for the rest of the day, the amount of sodium in that one meal already prevents me from having another meal.  MyNetDiary only allows for 2300 mg of sodium at most per day.  And sodium - being the fantastic element that it is - is a good water retainer for the body.  Something you'd take if you were dehydrated or in the desert.  This also means a higher water volume in the body which results in the heart requiring much more effort to pump the blood and water throughout the body - in other words high blood pressure.

And look at that chart!  An Awesome Blossom at Chili's provides 2710 calories, 203 grams of fat, and 6360 milligrams of sodium.  Wow!  Now I'm really curious what an Awesome Blossom is.  I suppose the only sensible item on the chart is the Double Down Sandwich from KFC.  It only has 540 calories, 32 grams of fat, and 1380 milligrams of sodium.  A tad much in terms of sodium and fat, but 540 calories is definitely better than 2710.  Now a footlong Subway veggie delite only has about 460 calories, 5 grams of fat, and 830 milligrams of sodium.  Not bad.  But can you imagine eating that every single day?