Xtreme Eating Awards skewer favorite restaurant dishes

Your burger has lettuce, so it must be healthy, right? A strawberry milkshake has fruit doesn’t it?

The Center for Science in the Public Interest’s 2011 Xtreme Eating Awards are out, and they’re serving up a healthy serving of reality (perhaps a little heavy on the snark) on some of the top offenders in American restaurants.

If there’s a theme, it seems to be centered on the meat and dairy — featuring a built-in-bacon burger from IHOP (1,250 calories plus two days’ worth of saturated fat), porterhouse steak from Morton’s (2,570 calories if you have mashed potatoes and creamed spinach on the side) and a fried-cheese melt from Denny’s (1,260 calories plus 3,010 milligrams of sodium).

Keep in mind, based on the 2,000-calorie diet touted in nutrition labels on food packages, the average consumer shouldn’t be consuming more than 65 grams of fat, 20 grams of saturated fat and 2,400 mg of sodium a day. (Your actual calorie requirements really vary depending on your height, weight and sex — so, depending on the individual, 2,000 calories might be presuming a pretty active lifestyle.)

Last year’s top offenders leaned more toward the starches, featuring pesto pasta from California Pizza Kitchen, noodles from P.F. Changs and spaghettini from the Cheesecake Factory.

It’s not all entrees. Other culprits include a Coldstone Creamery peanut butter and chocolate shake, weighing in at 2,010 calories, a full day’s worth. And the Cheesecake Factory is a serial offender in the center’s book: This year, it’s nailing the red velvet cheesecake for its three days’ worth of saturated fat, among other offenses; last year, the restaurant’s chocolate tower truffle cake drew boos for having more calories (1,670) than any other on the list at the time.

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