¿Mi extremo está consiguiendo grande?

Posted: Tue, Mar 29, 2005

Translation: Is my butt getting big? If you've been eating Qdoba burritos, the answer is probably "faster than you think."

So, I've been popping into Qdoba every few weeks to get a burrito. It makes me feel like I'm doing something relatively good for my body. I always get the grilled vegetables (healthy!) with rice and black beans (fiber! vitamins!) and the pico de gallo salsa. I forego the sour cream, cheese, and guac (no fat!).

I did just this today. As I was hoisting the rather hefty burrito to my face, I wondered just how many calories were in the thing. Qdoba has a nifty nutrition site where you can pick exactly what kind of burrito you got and exactly what you put on it, and it'll calculate the exact damage you're inflicting.

Confident in my food choices, I punched the numbers. What appeared on the screen was a rude shock. My healthy burrito was packing 770 calories. A Big Mac only has 590 calories. The fat news wasn't totally awful — 18 grams (vs. a Big Mac's 34) — but still, this is not what I had envisioned as my healthy eating plan.

The main culprit is the tortilla. Get your burrito "naked" — in a bowl — and the calorie count drops to a respectable 430 and you lose 8 g of fat. Which leads me to the question: how do they pack 340 calories into such a flat piece of bread?

The nutrition news is not all bad. The food combination is basically a good one. The burrito also gives you lots of protein and fiber, as well as 40% of your RDA of iron and 30% of your calcium. I'd recommend against eating one every day though, or your burrito won't be the only thing that's muy grande.

Comments

1. Mar 30, 05 06:25 AM | Steph Mineart said:

Damn it, Jen. Now I can't pretend my quesadillas are okay to eat any more, because I looked them up. Weird how much fat and calories are in the tortillas, because you can find tasty tortillas in the grocery store with much better nutritional numbers, so it seems like they could make them a bit healthier. Naked burritos it is then.

2. Mar 30, 05 09:01 AM | Rachel Wolfe said:

Yay, I always get the naked chicken burrito with no rice (I don't like the cilantro they put in the rice) -- except I've been getting the tortilla on the side. Now I'll skip the tortilla, but I'm glad to know my regular selection isn't that bad. Qdoba's food is yummy, and they just opened a new one right by me on Keystone...

3. Mar 30, 05 09:32 AM | Stephanie said:

I think the reason Qdoba's tortillas have more fat and calories than the ones in the grocery store is that they're a lot bigger. Qdoba says they use 13" tortillas, which are just over 132 square inches, and grocery store tortillas are generally 10" (just over 78 square inches, and yes, I used a calculator!).

4. Mar 30, 05 09:11 PM | Nathan Frampton said:

Congratulations on your Indy Star mention.

5. Nov 15, 05 05:53 PM | Alissa said:

I'm not so sure I completely trust the nutritional info given on the Qdoba site, mostly because it says that a steak burrito with no rice but with cheese and sour cream has 740 calories, but apparently the same burrito with just cheese (and no sour cream) has more calories (!) at 830. This makes no sense whatsoever!

6. Nov 16, 05 10:49 AM | Rachel Wolfe said:

Perhaps that means that sour cream actually eliminates calories -- it's a breakthrough! We can eat MORE!! (Yeah, um, how about somebody else gives that theory a try. My ass is big enough already, thanks.)

7. Aug 7, 13 05:58 PM | related website said:

I find the heartburn symptoms that goes along with Gerd to be absolutely unbearable at times.

¿Mi extremo está consiguiendo grande?

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