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Olive Garden has many signature dishes, but it's perhaps most famous for its breadsticks. The Italian food restaurant chain won over fans with its unlimited breadsticks deal, even as some investors criticized the policy for being wasteful.
From a nutritional perspective, the health benefits of these breadsticks are questionable. Each individual breadstick, and its garlic-butter spread, contains 140 calories, 25g of carbs and 460mg of sodium. While that may not seem like a lot, we all know how easy it is for one breadstick to turn into two or five.
Regardless, the breadsticks are far from the restaurant's most caloric items. Using information from Olive Garden, HealthGrove, a health research site powered by Graphiq, set out to find the 25 most caloric items on the menu. In the event of a tie, menu items with more sodium are ranked higher. Of course, calories aren't the only factor that determines a food item's nutritional value. To provide more context, we also list each menu item's total fat, sodium and carbs.
Unsurprisingly, many of the top items on this list contain cream-based sauces, such as carbonara or Alfredo. Perhaps more surprising is how frequently chicken-based dishes appear on the list. While it's true that chicken is normally a healthier alternative to beef or pork, when it's doused in cheese sauce and fried, the health benefits start to disappear.
*Note: Dinner portions are used for items that appear on both the lunch and dinner menus. This list does not consider all seasonal or limited time only items.
Photos from Olive Garden
