Olive Garden Breadstick Lovers Beware!

So, I was perusing Yahoo! this morning and I found some very disturbing and disheartening information...

I am obsessed with the Olive Garden, and I've always thought that I couldn't be behaving totally horrendously when only ordering the unlimited breadsticks and salad lunch. After all, it's an italian restaurant, I'm not eating alfredo sauce here... more than half my meal is salad, right? WRONG! Olive Garden's alluring lunch combo just topped David Zinczenko's (author of "Eat This Not That"/ Food & Diet Mega-God) list of "Worst 'Free' Restaurant Foods".

Zinczenko reports that some of the most horrific items on any restaurant menu are the ones that they slap on your table free of charge. Also on the list? Red Lobster's "Cheddar Bay Biscuits" at 100 calories a piece, Ruby Tuesday's "Endless Fries" at 360 calories per serving, Denny's "Free Shortstack" pancakes at 470 calories a serving, and then, as i reported above, the mother of all freebee foolishness, the Olive Garden's "Unlimited Salad and Breadsticks Lunch" coming in at 500 calories per one serving of salad and one breadstick... I'm sorry... one 3 ounce bowl of garden salad and one bread stick does not constitute lunch for me, so the damage can only get worse from there.

So, for those of you counting calories this season, stay away from the evils of free meal sides... I'm so disappointed, but still glad I found out about all this before the next time I hit up the Olive Garden.