Sneaky - High Calorie SALADS - Beware!

So my hubby called a little bit ago and invited me to come eat lunch with him over at a place called McAlister's Deli. At first, I said no b/c having eaten here before, they have a lot big sandwiches, stuffed baked potatoes all kinds of oooey gooey cheesy sides dishes, etc. I knew that I could blow my CC for today by eating there. My hubby said - Oh don't worry they have lots of salads. I'm sure you'll find something on the healtheir-lighter side. So... I had to rush out to meet him. I didn't think about looking up their menu/nutrition information online first. I selected a grilled chicken salad with light ranch dressing. Seems like a pretty safe choice right? WRONG! When I looked up the calories in this salad once we returned from lunch I was horrified to find these stats:

Total Calories - 840 (Holy Cow!)

Total fat - 44 g (Holy Cow again.)

Sat. fat - 15 g

Cholest. - 131 mg

Sodium - 3164 mg

Carbs - 47 g

Fiber - 4 g

Sugars - 8 g

Protein - 57 g

Plus - the light ranch dressing adds another 100 cals.

I could have had a yummy turkey sandwich and a huge cookie for less calories. I feel duped! That just goes to show - check the nutrition info before you eat out so you can make the best choices. I took for granted the fact that a chicken salad would be a smart choice. Now I'll have to limit my dinner tonight to just a few hundred calories to stay under my goal for the day. Boooooo :-{

they have a delicious reuben there. I haven't had one in 5 months! :(

Zaxby's zalads are terrible, too!

Holy sodium content, batman!

What the heck was on the salad if those nutritionals don't even include the dressing?! Cheese? Croutons? Butter?

Hi there - yes there was cheese and croutons. Less than an ounce of shredded cheddar if I had to eyeball it. Maybe 10-12 croutons. Nothing that made me shudder when I saw it. It's not a HUGE salad either. I'd say about a medium sized one. They must cook the chicken in butter or something to pile up all those calories.  Surely they snuck a big brownie in there somewhere too, I must have missed that under the lettuce.

that really annoys me!! i mean obviously people are eating salads as a lighter alternative so why do they have to load them up with a bunch of crap?! the worst is when i went to wendy's and i ordered a salad... the salad dressing alone had 24g of fat! insane!