Olive Garden: Please serve healthier, greener and more responsible meals

by Emily Snyder, Center for Science in the Public Interest

“Reach new levels of comfort with indulgent twists on our famous lasagna, like NEW Ravioli Alfredo Lasagna,” touts Olive Garden’s website.

Doesn’t Olive Garden’s Lasagna Classico have enough calories (960) and saturated fat (31 grams) already? Leave it to America’s second biggest casual restaurant chain to pile “indulgent cheese-filled ravioli” on top of lasagna to serve up a 1,170-calorie dish with a whopping two-and-a-half days’ worth of saturated fat (48 grams). This is just the latest over-the-top promotion from Darden’s Olive Garden, which continually finds new ways to make Mediterranean food unhealthy.

In Darden’s most recent Citizenship Report, President & Chief Executive Officer Gene Lee says, “‘People, Planet & Plate’ is how Darden describes our commitment to provide our guests with nutritious, high-quality and responsibly-sourced food; protect the natural environment; support and develop our employees; and give back to our communities. It’s our definition of corporate citizenship.”

Yet nutritious meals aren’t core to Olive Garden’s menu. A 2015 survey found that nearly half of all Americans give a lot of thought to the healthfulness of the foods and drinks they consume. If you’re looking for an indulgent meal (like the limited-time Ravioli Alfredo Lasagna), Olive Garden is your place. Diners have dozens of high-calorie, high-saturated fat meals to choose from. But for diners who want a healthy meal, choices are limited. Olive Garden’s “Lighter Italian Fare” (meals under 575 calories) provides diners with just a handful of choices. And, tempts them to “Start with unlimited soup or salad and breadsticks on us.”

Olive Garden’s many disease-promoting menu options undermine diners’ healthy intentions and encourage us to eat too many calories and too much saturated fat and sodium.

What’s the problem with an occasional indulgent meal out? Nothing. But, it’s not just an occasional meal. Americans eat a third of our calories away from home. Olive Garden is the second largest casual restaurant chain in the country (measured by system-wide sales), with more than 800 locations. Indulgent meals add up and tip the scales. In fact, several dozen studies show the link between eating out and obesity.

Olive Garden supported the national menu labeling law in 2010 and has improved its kids’ meals. Now, it’s time for Darden to adopt good food purchasing principles. Olive Garden menus should include generous portions — of fruits and vegetables, legumes, and whole grains — not saturated fat, salt, white flour, and other health-damaging ingredients.

Darden should not only support the well-being of its customers, but also of its workers, farmers, animals, and our environment. The nation’s largest full-service restaurant employer should pay its workers enough to be able to afford healthy foods for themselves and their families. Many Darden workers make poverty wages (some as low as the tipped minimum wage of $2.13 per hour). While Darden boasts of its donations to Feeding America to reduce hunger, it would be better to pay workers a living wage than donate to charity.

The company should also offer more full-time jobs and provide all employees with paid sick leave. Nearly 90 percent of restaurant workers lack even a single paid sick day to recover from illnesses. As a result, two-thirds of restaurant workers say they’ve cooked, prepared, or served food while sick. That’s bad for customers’ health too.

Large portions of lasagna are not only padding our waistlines and clogging our arteries (cheese is the number one source of saturated fat in Americans’ diets), but they’re also bad for the planet. Healthier menu options with less meat and cheese would greatly reduce Olive Garden’s water and climate footprints.

In the past, eating out was a treat. Now, eating out is a regular part of Americans’ diets and a huge part of the food system. Darden has taken some positive steps forward, but there is a lot more the company should do to ensure the well-being of its customers, employees, and the environment.

The time for change is now. Click here to tell Darden: We want healthier, greener, and more responsible meals at Olive Garden.

Emily Snyder is a Registered Dietitian and Nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Read more about CSPI’s work here.

Originally published at medium.com on May 9, 2016.