Some Ignore, Some Heed Center Report on Mexican Food : Nutrition: O.C. restaurants and fast-food eateries do offer healthy options but admit some menu items can be high in fat and sodium.

A report Monday that Mexican-style food contains too much fat and sodium--enough on some platters to constitute a stick of butter--is something that Janee Allegre is going to take with a grain of salt.

“There’s something wrong with everything you eat nowadays,” the Huntington Beach woman said as she walked out of El Torito Grill in Costa Mesa after lunch Monday. “Every week, it’s something different.”

Whether it’s high-fat movie theater popcorn or cream-sauce-covered fettucine Alfredo, the bad nutritional news simply “goes in one ear and out the other,” Allegre said.

Diners and restaurateurs didn’t show much concern about a report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington consumer organization specializing in food and nutrition. The center’s report stated that popular items at typical Mexican restaurants far exceed the federal government’s recommended daily limit of fat, saturated fat and sodium.

The center’s researchers, after adjusting their data for serving size, determined that typical Mexican food served at sit-down restaurants isn’t much different nutritionally than anything offered at a local Taco Bell.

Allegre and others who ate lunch at El Torito agreed that those who care about their diets watch what they eat, even at Mexican restaurants where it might not be so easy to figure out how much fat and salt and how many calories are hidden in the carnitas plate or the burrito combination.

Orange County restaurant owners said that diners, regardless of what they say, do care about eating healthy food when they go out.

“Why else have all the major fast-food chains--even McDonald’s--taken all lard out of frying?” asked J.D. Williams, a stockbroker who owns PJ’s Casa Fiesta in Lake Forest.

PJ’s, for instance, uses soybean oil for frying and offers a menu approved by the American Heart Assn. Other Mexican-style eateries--typically small, family-owned ones--also promote what they say is “healthy” food, though nutritional information isn’t usually provided on menus.

At Taco Mesa, manager Ezequiel Levy uses vegetable oil for frying and very little salt--”just for taste,” he said. “Our logo is ‘healthy and authentic.’ ”

Chevys, a San Francisco chain with three Orange County sites, said its “fresh Mex” concept offers low-fat, low-calorie items, like chicken and vegetable fajitas, vegetarian black beans and vegetable burritos. Acapulco Mexican Restaurants in Long Beach offers similar fare along with a promise to cook the food the way the customers want it.

But they acknowledge that Mexican food can contain a great deal of fat and sodium.

“Even those with healthier lifestyles will go to a Mexican restaurant for a change of pace,” said Fred Wolfe, Acapulco’s senior vice president. Customers also expect to fill themselves up with food that isn’t always the best for their arteries.

“I’m not afraid of being El Gordo ,” Jim Belsha of Beverly Hills, who eats Mexican food once or twice a week. “I wash it all down with a lot of beer.”

But Kim Thompson of Newport Beach is a careful eater. He stopped eating popcorn at movie theaters after the Center for Science in the Public Interest reported earlier this year that theater popcorn was loaded with fat and sodium.

“I could see where a taco salad with sour cream and refried beans and all the other things in a big tortilla bowl is definitely bad for you,” he said. “But at least here (El Torito Grill), the taco salad comes on a plate and is mainly just lettuce with grilled chicken breast on it.”

Craig Decker, visiting Costa Mesa from Chesterfield, Mo., figures he’ll “slow down on nachos” after learning that a plate of tortilla chips smothered in cheese and other toppings can have the fat equivalent of a quarter-pound stick of butter.

His friends, Rudy Villicana and Jennifer McCasland, both of Westminster, are avid patrons of Taco Bell, where a seven-layer burrito contains 485 calories, 21 grams of fat--including 8 grams of saturated fat--and 1,115 milligrams of sodium.

The center’s report did not cover fast food, but researchers used the nutritional value in Taco Bell items as comparisons with the food they sampled from sit-down restaurants.

Nevertheless, Taco Bell spokeswoman Janis Smith said that the fast-food chain offers some low-fat or low-calorie menu items and will test-market “healthier options” this fall.

Irvine-based El Pollo Loco, also part of the fast-food industry, criticized the center’s report because it “ignores the high nutritional value” of such fare as its “flame-broiled” Mexican-style chicken. The chicken and side dishes “are among the healthiest choices available in the quick service industry,” said Lou Franson, the company’s marketing director.

Times staff writers Greg Johnson in Costa Mesa and Jeff Leeds in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.