Fat grams - oh the shock, oh the horror!

My daughter works at Boston Pizza here in town.  A friend of mine, upon finding this out, said "oh I'd NEVER eat there!" Okay, I thought, I'll bite (no pun intended) why not?  "Their food is so high in fat!" 
Again, um, this is a PIZZA PLACE of course it's high in fat.  However, my friend pointed out that she ordered an entree sized Greek Salad... and halfway through, she asked her server for a nutrtional guide.  To her "shock and horror" (her words, not mine) her Greek Salad had 105 g of FAT! At first I thought they must be deep frying the lettuce.  However, after my own shock and horror (my words) wore off, I did an analysis of that salad.

Now... fyi, there are 14g of fat in 1 tbsp of olive oil. Then, just one black olive has 2.5 g of fat - all of these are "healthy fats" but lots of fat nonetheless...so let's say you had an average of 3 tbsp of olive oil on your salad - that's 42g, plus say 6 olives is 15g - You are looking at 57g of fat in just the olive oil/olives. The remainder of the fat would come from feta! In 1 cup of regular crumbled feta there are about 32g of fat,..So, let's say you had about 1/4 c on your salad (seriously, that's not much!) that would be another 8g of fat to your 57g... So now you are up to 65g of fat on a 'regular sized' greek salad that you would make at home! If you order a restaurant size salad, aka the "entree" salad, it's considerably larger than you would make for yourself at home... so 65g x 1.75 (not quite double) = 113.75g of fat in your Greek Salad. ... you can always ask for your salad without feta! That same Greek Salad has 1960 mg of sodium - feta is very high in sodium.

Now, I know you are saying (with your own shock and horror) that you would NEVER use 3 tbsp of olive oil on your own salad.  Remember, that most greek salads have marinated the tomatoes and cucumbers in oil prior to adding them to your salad - so yes you would use 3 tbsp! 

Don't like the numbers?  Don't order the salad!  Make your own at home. You are actually better off (in fat grams) to order the Citrus Chicken Salad - it only has 7g of fat!

Enjoy!