Long John Silver's Big Catch meal has recently been deemed "the worst meal in America" in terms of being artery clogging, but the Cheesecake Factory's Bistro Shrimp Pasta has more fat, and the calorie equivalent of eating three sticks of butter.
A laboratory test found 33 grams of trans fat in Long John Silver's Big Catch meal. The fried lunch also had a heart-stopping 3,700 milligrams of sodium, and a "tame" 1,320 calories. The meal contains fried fish, Hushpuppies, and Onion Rings, along with an artery-clogging amount of sodium and trans fat, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) reported.
The Cheesecake Factory's Bistro Shrimp Pasta gives the fried fish meal a run for its money. The dish contains "Crispy Battered Shrimp, Fresh Mushrooms, Tomato and Arugula Tossed with Spaghettini and a Basil-Garlic-Lemon Cream Sauce" according to the restaurant's menu, which sounds innocent enough.
The dish is far from innocent, unless you consider 2,730 calories wholesome. The Bistro Shrimp Pasta also boasts 78 grams of saturated fat and 919 mg of sodium, Eat This Not That wrote.
The 33 grams of trans fat in Long John Silver's meal mostly comes from industrially produced partially hydrogenated frying oil. The Cheesecake Factory is also known for using cheap flavors in abundance, such as "oils, butter, cream, salt, and sugar." Cheesecake Factory is notorious for serving very generous portions as well.
The American Heart Association recommends only one or two grams of trans fat a day, so the 33 grams in the Big Catch is about 16 times the daily suggested serving size, or two-weeks' worth CSPI reported.
"Long John Silver's Big Catch meal deserves to be buried 20,000 leagues under the sea," CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson said. "This company is taking perfectly healthy fish-and entombing it in a thick crust of batter and partially hydrogenated oil. The result? A heart attack on a hook. Instead of the Big Catch, I'd call it America's Deadliest Catch."
In 2006 KFC had to stop using partially hydrogenated oil when a CSPI lawsuit prompted them to do so after discovering their worst meal held 15 grams of trans fat, that's less than half of what's in the Big Catch.
"Trans fat from partially hydrogenated oil is a uniquely damaging substance that raises your bad cholesterol, lowers your good cholesterol, and harms the cells that line your blood vessels," Walter C. Willett, chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health said. "It might have been defensible to use hydrogenated oil in the 1980s, before trans fat's harmfulness was discovered, but no longer. It is outrageous that Long John Silver's foods are still loaded with artificial trans fat and that the FDA still permits it in foods."
Long John Silvers is under fire because they weren't honest about the amount of fish, and the amount of trans fat, in their meal.
"It's the largest fish we have ever offered, weighing in at seven ounces to eight ounces of 100-percent premium haddock caught in the icy waters of the North Atlantic," Long John Silver's executive Charles St. Clair said in a press release. When CSPI researchers removed the breading from the fish, it only weighed about four and a half ounces, leaving over three ounces of oily batter.
"It turns out that when Long John Silver's says seven to eight ounces of 100 percent haddock, it's more like 60 percent haddock, and 40 percent batter and grease," Jacobson said. "Nutrition aside, that's just plain piracy."
Lab tests also found 19.5 grams of trans fat in their onion rings alone, the chain had only disclosed seven grams.
