WASHINGTON -- The typical meal served in an Asian restaurant contains a tsunami of nutritional no-nos, a consumer group has warned.A plate of Ho Chi Minh City Chicken, for example, is loaded with about 90% more sodium and more than three-quarters of the calories an average adult needs for an entire year.
"We have to sound the alarm about Asian food," said Dr. Velveeta Lugosi-Swayne, nutrition director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which prepared a report released last week. “Not that anyone will hear it over all of the munching and slurping that goes on in those places – not to mention the belching,” Lugosi-Swayne lamented.
The report was greeted with disbelief by diners packing the popular Chairman Mao’s restaurant here in DC.
“Just who are these do-gooders?” shouted Bradleys Roadhouse over the din as he gobbled down a plate of Tojo’s Imperial Steak With Bacon. “What? They’re not happy unless they’re scaring us about something!”
Calorie-laden Asian restaurant food can lead to heart attack, stroke, cancer, diabetes or worse, the report contended.
Roadhouse’s companion, a stylish, younger man who would not provide his name, was unpersuaded. “This food loaded with calories? Why is it, then, that every time I eat here I have to stop for a couple of hamburger and a milkshake on the way home?”
