I Thought I Could Trust You

Dear Olive Garden,

Yesterday, I talked my whole family into eating at your establishment because I thought I could trust you. I just knew you had a salad that I could eat on my diet. I was careful on your breadsticks because they are 150 calories a piece. I ate 1 1/2. Yes, that is a record for me! I ate your Zuppa Toscana soup. Even though it was unlimited I ate only 1 bowl because that is another 170 calories.

Your salad, though, was something that I thought I could trust to fill me up and make my trip and self discipline worth it. I had 2 bowls and swiped a couple of other little pieces of lettuce from the bowl too when everyone was finished. I topped this lovely meal off with 1/2 a mint. Perfect, I thought, I am not hungry. I probably got away with maybe around 500 calories.

Little did I know that your salad would betray me. What I thought was the safe dish, so much so that I did not check the calories beforehand, was an evil calorie breaker. As you know, I have a food diary where I log in my calories. When I opened my book on calories, I saw that one serving of your lovely disguised salad was a whopping 350 calories per serving. Olive Garden, I had two bowls + of your salad and I because of you making your salads so caloric I had to eat a salmon burger for dinner. Blah! I went over my carefully regulated calories for the day and now I have to exercise more to lose the weight. I ate at least 700 of my 1400 calories a day on salad.

Could you please tell me what you put into that salad dressing that makes it so caloric? Is it heavy whipping cream? :) Is it a pound of chocolate? Although it is good, it was not worth wasting 1/2 of my calories for the day on. :) If I could make a suggestion. . . .could you put a warning label on the side of your salad that tells us calorie counting dieters to beware? I know this would mean a lot to many others besides me.

Thank you for letting me tell my story and get this off my chest.

Frustrated Calorie Counter