What the Heck Do I Order?!!

Last Friday my friend and I went to a Photoshop Power User seminar at the convention center in South San Francisco. I didn't even know they had a convention center in South San Francisco (it's a separate city) let alone what restaurants would be around there so I had no way to plan my meals. Planning my meals is half of my diet strategy! Turns out the only thing near the convention center was Houlihan's. So if I wanted to eat breakfast and lunch that was my choice.

Breakfast was pretty easy.  I had an egg, english muffin and some fruit. I could roughly guess that it would be about 7 points and it actually turned out to only be 5.  Regardless, I knew I was safe on that front. We happily enjoy breakfast and waddle off to the convention center.  The seminar was fantastic and the first half of the day went really quickly suddenly - Lunchtime!

Back to Houlihan's we waddle, but what I thought would be a pleasant lunch turned out to be a Weight Watchers nightmare. I opened the menu and there was nothing, absolutely nothing that I saw to order. (If you want to see for yourself you can view it here.) I searched and searched and searched.  The first thing that caught my eye was the Fish Tacos, but being with chipotle mayo and being breaded in panko I didn't think that would be a good choice. I kept looking over and over the menu and then thought that maybe I should just look up their menu online to see if they had nutrition values, but guess what? My AT&T iPhone is permanently set to "Show Zero Bars When Phone Is Needed" so I was totally on my own.

So, what did I do? I did exactly what I always tell myself not to do. I ordered a salad. I know, I know, I know that it never turns to be as figure-friendly as it should be, but I have been trained just like the rest of us to think that a salad is the "healthy choice." It certainly wouldn't be an evil hamburgers. No, no, those hamburgers are the sole reason that America has an obesity problem. So, I choose my "healthy" Seared Ahi Tuna Salad and hoped for the best.

When I got home I diligently looked up the nutrition values online. So, I bet you know the outcome. The salad was much higher in calories and points than I expected. No surprise there, what did surprise me was when I did a little comparison of foods on the menu and their points value:

Item	Calories	Fat	Points
Ahi Tuna Salad	1074	67	28
Hamburger	703	13	18
Veggie Burger	825	14	21
Fish Tacos	876	39	23

So look at that!  A plain old hamburger is almost 10 points less than that "healthy" salad.  10 POINTS! What's more shocking is that the hamburger is even less points than a veggie burger, even with all that fiber veggie burgers have!  And, those fish tacos, you got it, fewer points than the salad.

So what did I learn here.  Well, I reaffirmed my suspicion that most entree salads are not figure-friendly. Far from it! More importantly, I learned that if I really need a go-to item when faced with a menu I am not familiar with that old fashioned hamburger is probably my safest choice. Imagine that! I guess it's not the culprit in America's obesity problem.