Photo by dbasulto (flickr.com/photos/dbasulto) A plate of food from TGI Fridays image:39868:1::0

Last week citizen journalist cgull wrote about what was the worst food in America.

It made me wonder just what else was there to know about the chain restaurant's food. I found that many of the chain restaurants provide one-third of all restaurant meals.

Yahoo's MensHealth wrote

Through scientific testing, consultations with nutrition experts, and good old-fashioned snooping, we uncovered some of the secrets these mega-restaurateurs have been keeping.

Let's take a look at some of the popular chains.

T.G.I. Friday’s has made a policy of not letting their customers know what the nutritional impact is on them from some of their popular dishes. Two of their major competitors such as Chili’s and Ruby Tuesday’s does let you know. However new legislation in New York City now makes the chains that have 15 or more restaurants nationwide provide what the calorie count is on all dishes and drinks that are on their menus.

Since I am a Red Hat Queen I have a friend who always says to me when he is going to tell me something shocking "Hold onto your Red Hat"

I love T.G.I. Friday’s Pecan Crusted Chicken Salad which should be a good choice. Right? That salad has 1,360 calories in it! Their Potato Skins have 2,270 calories and the Double-Stack Quesadillas have 1,670 calories.

Red Robin, do you love those BIG burgers? So far they have not posted the nutritional information yet. When they were contacted Red Robin's senior vice president said the information would be available in Oct of 2007. The information is now on this Web site
My favorite the Teriyaki Chicken Burger has (900 cal/47g fat/3g fiber/65g carbs/55g protein)
Hey but it is not as bad as the Whiskey River BBQ Burger which has(1169 cal/72g fat/5g fiber/77g carbs/49g protein)

Applebee's, a popular chain would rather that you didn't know that many of their "low-fat" dishes have more than 500 calories. Their low-fat chicken quesadillas have 742 calories for each order.

Panera Bread, a favorite of many, as you can take your computers there and check all those emails while munching away. Ouch, gee will you stop talking to me before I scream at you. Well the problem is they do not want you to know that the synthetic food colorings in their pastries have been linked to irritability, restlessness, and sleep disturbance in children.

Those same ingredients are in fast-food items such as mayonnaise, M&M Blizzards, and McDonald's. NO not the Blizzards!!! I am going to scream now not because it has made me irritable but, well, it just irritates me that those types of ingredients are there.

Baskin-Robbins too! Gee sometimes I take a book and go in there before I go grocery shopping and sit and read for awhile and get a dish of one of my favorites, Baseball Nut. You don't want to shop on an empty stomach, ya know. I just looked to see what was said about that flavor.

It says that it has 280 calories and the calories from fat are 130. Well not as bad as that delicious chicken salad.

They would rather that you don't know though, that the top four ingredients in its Blue Raspberry Fruit Blast are Sierra Mist soda, water, sugar, and corn syrup.

Going to Dunkin' Donuts? Hey get a medium-size fruit-and-yogurt smoothie, much better than that delicious chocolate-frosted cake doughnut for sure. Well isn't it? Of course not!!
This article isn't about what is good for you, now is it? Well that little smoothie has at least 60 grams of sugar!! Which is more than four times the amount of the sugar in that doughnut.
The fruit purees that they use in the smoothies are mixed with a lot of sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup.

OK time to list a restaurant that I don't go to as I am getting very depressed here.

Let's pick on IHOP. Now they don't want you to know that when you have an Omelette Feast that it has 1,335 calories and 35 grams of saturated fat. They certainly don't want you to know that by the time you finish that baby off you'll have consumed 150 percent of your daily fat requirement and 300 percent of your suggested cholesterol intake. Oh my, I don't think that is very good, do you?

Well anyway, the sit-down chains don't want you to know that a lot of their menu items are many times worse for you than the fast-food chains. When the menus were analyzed the 24 national chain's average entree contained 867 calories and the fast-food's entree was only
522 calories. But one thing to keep in mind that was for the entree alone. Now if you decide to add an appetizer, a side dish or two, and/or a dessert — well I think by now you get the picture.