FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Contact: Jeff Cronin, 202-777-8370, or Stacey Greene, 202-777-8316
Food Porn Alert: Chili’s “Chocolate
Chip Paradise Pie”
1,600-Calorie Dessert Equivalent to One
and a Half Racks of Chili’s Original Baby Back Ribs
WASHINGTON—After a full restaurant meal,
would you order a rack of baby back ribs for dessert? How about a
rack and a half? That would be roughly equivalent to Chili’s Chocolate
Chip Paradise Pie—the latest Food Porn exposed in
Nutrition Action
Healthletter. That dessert provides 1,590 calories (about three-quarters
of a day’s worth), 37 grams of saturated fat (almost two days’ worth),
and surprisingly, for a dessert, 910 milligrams of sodium (more than half
a day’s worth). (The nutrition data have shifted very slightly since
Nutrition Action went to press.)
Chocolate
Chip Paradise Pie is a bar containing chocolate chips, walnuts and coconut,
underneath vanilla ice cream, hot fudge and caramel toppings.
“It’s quite easy to find appetizers and
entrées north of 1,000 calories at Chili’s, so who knows what damage has
already been done by the time dessert hits the table,” said CSPI senior
nutritionist Jayne Hurley. “But even if you split the Chocolate
Chip Paradise Pie with someone else, it still would have more calories
than the chain’s cheesecake. This kind of food porn helps explain
America’s epidemic of obesity, heart disease and diabetes. It also
makes a compelling case why calorie counts belong right on the menus, not
just buried on corporate web sites.”
Nutrition
Action, published by the nonprofit nutrition watchdog group, the Center
for Science in the Public Interest, spotlights a Food Porn on the back
page of every issue. Other recent Food Porns include Starbucks’
Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate, Sara Lee Cheesecake Bites, and DiGiorno’s
Ultimate Focaccia Pizza.
In its January/February issue CSPI gives its
Right Stuff ranking to Eden Organic No Salt Added Beans—canned beans that
come without added sodium (and whose cans come without the controversial
chemical BPA).
The Center for Science in the Public
Interest is a nonprofit health advocacy group based in Washington, DC,
that focuses on nutrition, food safety, and pro-health alcohol policies.
CSPI is supported by the 900,000 U.S. and Canadian subscribers to
its Nutrition Action Healthletter and by foundation grants.
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Communications Department
Center for Science in the Public Interest
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Washington, DC 20009
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