Hoping for a free meal? Fat chance
About 500 hungry readers, give or take, confidently lined up for last Sunday’s food quiz and took their best shot at a free meal.
“See you for lunch,” said a contestant calling himself “Leonard, the lawyer from Long Beach.”
Unfortunately, Leonard missed six of the eight questions.
But he had company.
“I am looking forward to my lunch with you!” said Susan Pearson, who proceeded to blow the quiz entirely. She missed eight out of eight.
“Allow me to embarrass myself,” said Diana Arnold, a professional dietitian.
Congratulations, Diana.
You missed seven out of eight.
For those who missed it, I bought lunch at five well-known dining establishments and delivered the food to a lab for a nutritional breakdown. I decided on my own quiz after the news that 523 Californians had flunked a test comparing the healthiest and unhealthiest offerings at popular chain restaurants, with not a single contestant correctly answering all four questions.
I got the Double-Double burger and fries at In-N-Out, two carne asada tacos at Burrito King, the bacon chili cheese dog at Pink’s, the pepperoni-and-cheese pizza at Wolfgang Puck Gourmet and the slippery shrimp (with rice and a fortune cookie) at Yang Chow. At the lab, they tossed each item into a blender and extracted oils to determine fat content. Then they incinerated samples in a 950-degree furnace and tested the resulting moisture and ash to determine protein, carbs and calories.
“There’s no way to accurately guess,” wrote Diana, the professional nutritionist, without knowing the portion size or cooking methods.
In my book, Diana, any bona fide Southern Californian ought to be familiar with these dishes.
But clearly not familiar enough.
Anyone care to guess how many of our 500 contestants correctly answered all eight questions (the most and fewest calories, most and least fat, most and least protein, most and fewest carbs)?
Looks like I’ll be eating alone.
In other words, ZEEEEE-RO!
Everyone flunked.
True confession: I missed three out of the eight myself, so don’t feel bad.
And the correct answers?
You might be more than a little surprised.
Let’s just say that if you’re going to eat an order of slippery shrimp and rice, you might want to have 911 on your cellphone’s speed dial.
But before you sink into despair, I have unbelievably good news:
Two carne asada tacos are practically health food.
“Excellent,” said Julian Montoya, the Burrito King, when I phoned him with the results. “We use very lean beef and cut out all the fat, so I’m not surprised.”
Those two tacos total just 407 calories and also rank lowest in fat grams (16) and carbs (22).
And the shrimp with rice?
Let me start with the positive spin:
Those delectable slippery buggers add up to 64 grams of protein, the most in the test. But an order carries a walloping 2,519 calories, with 96 grams of fat and 347 carbs.
Counterintuitive, huh?
Tacos, good. Shrimp, bad.
When I called William Sung, the genial host of Yang Chow, I withheld the details for a moment and asked which food item had the most calories.
He guessed the pizza or the burger.
“And how many calories do you think are in the slippery shrimp?” I asked.
“Five hundred,” he said. “I’m guessing. Five hundred, 1,000.”
Keep guessing, William.
When I told him, I think he fell over backward, possibly into a plate of slippery shrimp.
“What the heck is in that stuff?” I asked.
“Garlic, ginger, vegetable oil, sugar, vinegar.”
And it’s fried, right?
“Yes. We fry it,” William said, as if he was confessing to a murder.
In William’s defense, Diana the nutritionist was onto something when she mentioned portions.
I didn’t give readers the weight of each food item, but the lab listed the slippery shrimp and rice at 1,026 grams, or more than twice the weight of the burger and fries, which tipped the scales in second place at 405 grams. Even if you cut the shrimp portion in half, though, it would still have more calories than the burger. I guess this means I’ll have to take several people along next time I get a craving for slippery shrimp.
Here’s another surprise from the lab:
If you took equal 100-gram portions of each item, which do you think would have the most calories?
Paging Wolfgang Puck.
The pizza at your gourmet express (280 calories for roughly one-fourth of a small pizza) beat out the 100-gram portions from In-N-Out (260 calories), the Pink’s bacon chili cheese dog (247) and the shrimp (246).
If anyone’s looking for one more excuse to go Mexican, a 100-gram portion of the carne asada tacos had the most protein (19 grams) and the least fat, carbs and calories. Of course, I didn’t order the refried beans.
“Oh, nice,” said Burrito King’s Montoya. “Thank you very much for calling.”
Although there was no winner, I do want to announce two awards.
The first, for cheeriest contestant, goes to a reader named Claudia.
“I’m not going to participate in your little contest,” she wrote. “I would like to put in my 2 cents worth, as a physician and nutrition expert. None I repeat NONE of these lunches comes even close to being healthy. Why would any person even risk eating at any of these horrid places.... No wonder everywhere I look I see fat people!”
Are you available for parties, Claudia?
And the award for most ambitious contestant goes to Annie Lin.
Lin did the most extensive investigation, consulting 11 websites for nutritional information.
“You’ll find attached a spreadsheet detailing how our calculations were made,” said Annie.
So how’d she do?
Got all eight answers wrong.
Your consolation prize, Annie, is a free lunch.
Get back to me right away.
(Quiz answers: 1. Most calories and fewest: shrimp, 2,519, and tacos, 407.2. Most fat and least, in grams: shrimp, 96.85, and tacos, 16.48. 3. Most protein and least, in grams: shrimp, 64.13, and hot dog, 29.3. 4. Most carbs and fewest, in grams: shrimp, 347.81, and tacos, 22.79.)
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Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com. And read previous columns at
latimes.com/lopez.
