--- title: Unhealthiest Meal at a Chain Restaurant: Red Robin Monster Burger description: At 3,540 calories, these restaurant meal is not going to make your waistline happy canonical: https://time.com/3063615/behold-the-unhealthiest-meal-you-can-eat-at-a-chain-restaurant/ author: Melissa Locker article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-31T14:54:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:05:58.529Z og:title: Behold the Single Unhealthiest Meal You Can Eat at a Chain Restaurant og:description: At 3,540 calories, this meal is not going to make your waistline happy og:url: https://time.com/3063615/behold-the-unhealthiest-meal-you-can-eat-at-a-chain-restaurant/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc350d99c4660786a/69869dea06f2c11d75330254/rtr40pn9.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Red Robin og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Behold the Single Unhealthiest Meal You Can Eat at a Chain Restaurant twitter:description: At 3,540 calories, this meal is not going to make your waistline happy twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc350d99c4660786a/69869dea06f2c11d75330254/rtr40pn9.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Behold the Unhealthiest Meal You Can Eat at a Chain Restaurant > Sponsored content. 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When you want to lose weight or get healthy, what is the first thing you would normally cut from your diet? If you said fat, you're not alone_ by [Melissa Locker](https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/) ## Melissa Locker Jul 31, 2014 2:54 PM UTC  A.1\. Peppercorn burger, Bottomless Steak Fries, and Monster Salted Caramel Milkshake is seen at a Red Robin restaurant in Foxboro, Massachusetts July 30, 2014. A.1\. Peppercorn burger, Bottomless Steak Fries, and Monster Salted Caramel Milkshake is seen at a Red Robin restaurant in Foxboro, Massachusetts July 30, 2014. Dominick Reuter—Reuters by [Melissa Locker](https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/) ## Melissa Locker Jul 31, 2014 2:54 PM UTC The [Center for Science in the Public Interest ](http://www.cspinet.org/new/201407301.html)(CSPI) has handed out their annual Xtreme Eating Awards to the fast food meals and chains that they deem the unhealthiest. After surveying over 200 chain restaurant menus for meals and combos that are especially high in calories, fat, sugar and salt, the winner of this year’s ignominious prize is a real monster. Specifically, Red Robin’s “monster-sized” A.1\. peppercorn burger, served with “bottomless” fries and a “Monster” milkshake, which clocks in at a whopping 3,540 calories. According to CSPI, it’s the “single unhealthiest” meal available at a chain restaurant, with 69 grams of saturated fat, 6,280 mg of sodium and an estimated almost three-quarters of a cup of added sugar. CSPI notes that to work off a meal of such, ahem, monstrous proportions, the average person would need to walk briskly for a full 12 hours, presumably not walking from one Red Robin to another. (One takeaway from this dubious distinction is that perhaps limiting one’s intake of foods preceded by the word “monster” should be step one towards healthy eating.) Joining Red Robin in the winner’s circle for this ignoble prize is the Cheesecake Factory. While Red Robin won the top prize for its monster combo, the Cheesecake Factory earned itself three spots on the list. The popular chain’s Farfalle with Chicken and Roasted Garlic clocked in at 2,410 calories, which CSPI notes is “the calorie equivalent of a five-hour jog.” Also in the ranks are the Bruléed French Toast, which rang up 2,780 calories, and a Reese’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake Cheesecake that contained 1,500 calories. Yes, the cheesecake had almost one thousand fewer calories than the innocent sounding chicken and pasta dish. Luckily the restaurant has many [“Skinnylicious” menu options](http://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/menu/skinnylicious/) that make it easier to make healthier choices. Consumers _can_ make healthier eating choices at chain restaurants as they increasingly add low calorie, low carb and weight watching friendly items to their menus. For example, at Red Robin you _could_ swap french fries for steamed broccoli, but that’s a different type of monster entirely. **MORE**: [11 Worst Fast Food Restaurants in America](http://time.com/2981499/worst-fast-food-restaurants/) **MORE**: [McDonald’s Liable for Employees’ Treatment, Labor Board Rules](http://time.com/3054211/mcdonalds-employees-labor/) ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] There's something we all enjoy about staying for dinner. You ever thought why? What was on your dinner table when you were younger? Chances are it had a lot to do with, what your doctor was telling you is healthy. Building a strong healthy body is like building a strong, beautiful building. If the foundation is weak, the whole building will be weak. It takes five fingers to point the way to healthful eating habits. Well, here we go. For years, the government published dietary guidelines. Meant to keep Americans healthy. There's a great deal to learn. Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. The body needs certain substances to live and grow. And remember, your body isn't just like an automobile. For years, the key measures of those guidelines were the same, cut fat from your diet. The committee's original report urged Americans to reduce their risk of heart attack. By reducing their intake of cholesterol down to the equivalent of about one egg a day. And those guidelines had an effect. From 1977 to 2012, per capita consumption of eggs fell by 9 %, beef by 37 %, whole milk by 72 %. Calories from saturated fat fell, while calories from supposedly safe carbohydrates increased. As one expert put it, it was a vast nutritional experiment. With nearly a million American's a year dropping dead from heart disease in the mid 80s, we had to try something. Nearly four decades later results are in. The experiment was a failure. Americans are sicker than they've ever been before. The prevalence of diabetes has gone up 157 % from 1980 to 2011. Nearly one in ten Americans now has the disease. Causing the public health system $ 245 billion a year. Heart disease is still the number one killer in the country. Americans are as obese as ever. So, what went wrong? Good old granola. Great for taste but loaded with fat. It doesn't take much of imagine a leap to assume that fat would make us fat, clog our arteries and raise the risk of heart disease. It turns out that saturated fat is a lot more complicated than we think. Carbohydrates and fats are nutrients. Like man, you need nutrients to live and grow. [ MUSIC ] Firstly, there are two kinds of cholesterol. LDL which is linked to heart disease and HDL which can be protective. Fats that course through the blood are known as triglycerides and high levels of those are linked to heart disease. Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol but also raises HDL. Moving LDL buildup on arterial walls. So raising both, makes saturated fat a cardio wash. One key piece of information is that LDL seems to come in two forms. Large and fluffy, small and dense. Those smaller particles are linked to heart disease, while the larger ones are mostly benign. Saturated fat increases the number of large particles. The opposite happens with carbs. I don't get it. Researchers have long since discovered the kind of fats found in olives and in fish like salmon. Are actually heart protective. Now it turns out the fats found in meat and dairy, aren't as bad as we feared before. So that means by focusing so much on fats. We may actually have been making ourselves sicker. So, she brings up the subject of reduced- fat cheese. It's a fat- free [ UNKNOWN ]. Fat- free, cholesterol free. Low- fat granola. Reduced- fat Kettle chips. Reduced- fat Chips Ahoy. Lowfat cottage cheese. Non- fat yogurt is the perfect example. The thinking for consumers was simple. Fat was dangerous. This product had no fat. Therefore, it must be healthy. It's non- fat, which means less calories. [ MUSIC ] But amid the confusion about fat, we end up replacing it in our diets with sugars and carbohydrates, which meant our calorie intake was actually going up. When carbs and things like corn and white bread are ingested into your body, their converted into sugars. Those sugars convert to insulin cuz it's fat cells go into storage overdrive, leading to weight gain. Since fewer calories are then left to fill the body, you begin to feel hungry it means our metabolism begins to slow down in effort to save energy, we eat more and we gain more weight, never quite feeling full. As this process repeats, our cells become more resistant to insulin, which causes us to gain more weight, which increases insulin resistance in a vicious circle. Cut calories, and people just get hungrier. Obesity, diabetes, high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol can all follow. Study after study has found it's very difficult to lose weight on a very low- fat diet. Possibly because fat and meat can produce a sense of satiety, that's hard to achieve with carbs, making it easier to simply stop eating. But it isn't just the increase in carbs that affects us. These processed, low saturated fat alternatives, come loaded with sugars, salt, preservatives, and even some unhealthy fats. So what's the real alternative? As one extra puts it, the cold hard truth about diet is that the only way to eat well, is to eat well. You'll be happier and you'll be healthier, if you focus on real whole foods, whether they have fat or not. Got it. 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