The Dish: Calorie-laden chicken club no better than fried chicken
August 5, 2010
Megan Ogilvie
HEALTH REPORTER
When you order a chicken club, you probably think, like me, that it’s a fairly healthy choice: Better for you than the creamy, sausage-studded pasta, but slightly worse on your waistline than the green salad loaded with chopped veggies.
The clubhouse at Canyon Creek Chophouse, one of this chain restaurant’s summer lunch options, sounds to be a reasonable midday meal. The menu describes it as “tender roasted chicken breast layered with applewood-smoked bacon, ripe tomato, lettuce and aged cheddar on lightly toasted oat bread.”
Not exactly health club fare — it’s got bacon in it, after all. But it doesn’t sound like fast food either.
According to the lab analysis, that’s a bad assumption.
“Eight hundred calories and 36 grams of fat is a huge amount for one meal, especially for just a sandwich,” says registered dietitian Shannon Crocker, who reels off a list of comparators when asked how the club stacks up against other meals.
Sit tight. It’s shocking.
The Canyon Clubhouse has:
“The same amount of calories as eight original deep-fried drumsticks from KFC.”
“The same amount of fat as a small pepperoni pizza from Pizza Pizza; yes, that’s six slices.”
“More calories and more fat than three pieces of chocolate cake with icing.”
Just in the sandwich?
“Yes.”
Yikes.
At Canyon Creek, the chicken club comes with a mound of salty, slightly curly fries. Well, it might come with something else, but the wait staff at the airport locale assumed this diner would prefer fries as her side.
Crocker says you can modify the sandwich to help cut calories, fat and sodium. With 1,124 mg, the sandwich contains 75 per cent of the average person’s daily recommended sodium allotment.
But, she admits, the ways to make it healthier — removing one of the three slices of bread, skipping the creamy spread and omitting the bacon or the cheese (or both) — renders it more of a plain chicken sandwich than a club.
“Taking out the cheese, the spread and the extra piece of bread will save you a couple hundred calories easily,” she says. “But that makes the sandwich something else.”
If you’re not in love with this particular clubhouse, it might be better to order something else. But if this is your sandwich of choice, Crocker says the smart thing to do is eat half the sandwich, skip the fries (“that’s a no brainer”) and pair it with a side salad.
“That’s a reasonable lunch.”
VERDICT: Steer clear. This calorie-laden chicken club does as much damage as eight fried chicken drumsticks.
Find out how other popular take-out meals stack up:
Chicken quesadilla
Dangerous Dan's burger
Deli chicken
Fit for Life salad
Roasted vegetable Bagellini
Ikea cinnamon bun
Cora's breakfast
Meat-lovers' pizza
Vendor hot dog
Lemon Tart
Veggie Samosas
Tim Hortons Hot Breakfast Sausage Sandwich
Spicy Salmon Sushi Roll
Pad Thai
Veal Parmigiano
Peameal Bacon Breakfast Sandwich
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