It is the easiest thing to do to walk into a restaurant and eat what they have on the menu. But, have you ever thought about what you are eating while you are consuming that delicious dish? Did it ever occur to you that just maybe those things you eat might actually not be very good for you? Most of us are guilty of this, especially when you are still young, and you trust those people who are preparing your food. We took the liberty to investigate what is in the food we so unquestioningly eat when we are in a restaurant.
If you want to know what not to eat in restaurants, click next and we will show you.
Stay Out Of the Bread Basket
These delightful little rolls and bread may look delicious and even appetizing, but beware, they might not be germ-free. These rolls and bread in the basket may just as well be leftovers from the previous diner’s table that just left. To make it even worse is that those germs can be quite a wide variety that comes from many people’s fingers touching it. Many restaurants will just heat up the bread in the microwave and add it to the next diners’ table complementary.
Edamame
You can buy these things at the supermarket in larger containers for far less than you pay for the little bit you get in a restaurant. There is not even a lot of work involved in preparing it to be ready for consumption. In general, it is very much over-priced at the restaurants with quite a hefty markup behind it. Worse is that some people will not even finish these snacks, and the leftovers are filled up for the next diner.
Pizza
Many people love to eat pizza at restaurants without even thinking about what they are putting in their mouths. Not that it will be dirty, but the ingredients on most pizzas in restaurants are basically cheap and of lesser quality. Many restaurants, or almost all of them, use the offcuts to add to the pizza ingredients to make it look better. Worse of it is that pizza is made from the cheapest ingredients and is sold at quite a high markup price.
Chicken
Chicken is chicken, no matter how you prepare it or what part of the chicken you order, it will be overcharged. Chicken is a cheap type of meat that is almost always sold at a much higher markup for the same thing. Next time you walk into a restaurant and you order that wing or portion of chicken, remember to make the sums. Remember also that the same portion can be made at home for a fraction of what you pay for it.
Ice-Cream
If it is not made in-house or some very exotic brand, it is just the same as the one you buy at the grocery store. It is a waste of your money most of the time when you order it at the restaurant at a much higher price. It contains the same high calories as those bought in containers at any grocer around the corner. So if you keep those away from your children, why pay much more for the same thing at the restaurant?
Those Gourmet Burgers
These are one of the most overrated and overcharged types of foods in the restaurants where they are served. Most of the time, you pay a relatively good price for high-quality ingredients that are not really high-quality. That truffle oil used in these burgers is made from cheap ingredients and not even healthy for you. With this type of food, you are cheated into believing they serve high-quality food, but it is made from cheap ingredients.
Seafood From Unknown Restaurants
Many times you may not get what you ordered and what is part of the menu. If you order a bluefin tuna, you might not get that. Many restaurants may serve the cheaper tilapia when you order a snapper from the menu. More than 70 percent of the time, you might not get crab cakes that are made from crabs from the Chesapeake Bay. This might happen more often than you think, and you still pay for the original ingredient.
Meatloaf At Restaurants
More often than you think, there is more filler than meat in the meatloaf served at restaurants. To cover this, they will often drown the meatloaf in seasoning and sauces so you will not notice that. To make it more attractive, they will add names to it so it will sound like it is homemade or from an original recipe. This is how they sell more of this cheap meatloaf with quite a markup attached to it.
Grill It Yourself
A BBQ grill built into the dining table may sound like a great way to eat out but beware of the germs. That is only the beginning of what you will get from this way of cooking your food, not to mention undercooked meat. You do not know if the grill is adequately cleaned after the previous diner finished cooking their meat. So the new diner just comes in and starts cooking their meat on the same grill without even knowing what is left on it.
Specials That Are Sauced-Up
Most of us know that you can disguise anything in a meal that is made with lots of sauce in it. But when we go to a restaurant, we never think that they may know the same tricks to sauce-up yesterday’s leftovers. Most restaurants use the leftovers from the previous day and make it the special of the day covered with lots of sauce. Be on the watch out for meats that are cut or braised and disguised in a stew or pasta.
Meat With Bones
Meat with the bone still in it, such as t-bone steak, is difficult to cook thoroughly. You will find that this type of meat is nearly charred on the outside but still raw on the inside. This might be undercooked meat that still contains some germs. It also cost the same, but you get much less meat from this than with boneless meat.
Free Snacks
These snacks are there for everyone to grab and eat, and they are not provided fresh for every new customer. So when you sit down at the bar and you find that bowl of nuts or pretzels, think twice before starting to munch on it. Because it is free, nobody even worries about putting out a bowl of fresh snacks; new ones are just added on top of the old ones. So the germs from yesterday or earlier today are still present in your favorite bar snacks.
Water From the Tap
This is one of the most dangerous items you may find in any restaurant during the day and night. These water containers that are left on your table may contain a large number of bacteria you may not even be aware of. Anything that is left outside and is between 40 and 140 degrees may have potential bacteria growth in it. The worst is that you do not even need to leave it there for a long time to start the bacteria growth.
Those Best-Sellers
Many restaurants, and especially fast-food restaurants, will pre-make those popular foods to keep up with the demands. All those pre-made foods have the potential to develop food-borne illnesses you are not aware of. So when you go to one of these restaurants to eat popular food, it is already a few hours old. The best way to prevent getting pre-made food is to go for the less popular foods to ensure fresh preparation.
Iceberg Wedge Salad
These salads are some of the most marked-up foods you may buy in any restaurant. This type of food is also not germ-free, and germs can be found in any wedge or crack of the lettuce. Even if some restaurants wash the lettuce they serve in these salads, it is served soggy, which is not good. You also do not know if your food is handled with washed hands.
Garnishes For Drinks
That lemon slice you so easily put in your water or even an alcoholic drink may contain many things you do not want to eat. These fruits or slices of fruits from bars and restaurants may not even be washed. Not to mention the hands that handled those fruits; are they sanitized before touching the food? Be careful next time you order a drink with a cherry in it, that fruit may have been outside the fridge for days.
Sprouts
Raw sprouts are often added to salads in restaurants to provide for that extra crunch when eating it. Even your sandwiches may contain these raw sprouts to add color and crunch to your food, but at a price. That sprout might just be the breeding ground for many different bacteria you are not aware of. It is also a staple ingredient in Asian cuisine, so next time you are at an Asian restaurant, ask them not to add those sprouts.
Raw Oysters
Raw oyster is a risk at even the best of restaurants, even those seafood joints you trust with your food. This seafood is a carrier of very scary food-borne viruses you do not want to get; Norovirus is one of them. The other one, Vibrio, is a flesh-eating bacteria that loves the warm water, so in summer, it is even more potent. Be careful the next time you order raw oysters and instead think about cooking them before eating it.
The Buffet
All that food that is sitting out there on the buffet table is a good place for an outbreak of food poisoning. There is also the risk of contamination from other people dishing up from this buffet table, a breeding place for bacteria. Very few of the people loading food from the table onto their plate first washed their hands. So when you get your favorite piece of meat or other food, you get yourself a helping of germs and bacteria.
Hollandaise Sauce
This sauce that is used mostly with eggs benedict might not always be that freshly made in restaurants. Chefs do not really like to prepare the eggs benedict and often will use the pre-made sauce with it when you order. Unfortunately, this sauce is not known to last very long, so it might not be as fresh as you think. The seasoning of the sauce may disguise the fact that it is not that fresh at all.
Fresh Juices
These fresh juices are crowded with bacteria that you will not find in pasteurized juices. Even though fresh-squeezed juices might be healthy for you, those found at restaurants may not be as healthy as you think. You do not know the conditions in which these juices are squeezed out. The hands, for starters, that squeezed out those juices might not even be washed clean from other types of food they might have touched.
Raw Dough Products
This is quite a dangerous thing to eat if you are not sure how fresh the dough ingredients are. Some pizza restaurants will give raw dough to kids to make their own mini-pies or play with the dough. It is proven that many different bacteria were found in this raw dough since it was not treated to kill harmful germs. Also, if the dough contains eggs, it might contain salmonella, which can make you very ill.
Ketchup On Tables
This may sound like a harmless thing to put on your food when eating at a restaurant, but it is not really that safe. The problem is these ketchup you find in glass jars may contain very old ketchup. This is because, at the end of a shift, all half-empty bottles are added together to fill up some bottles. In this case, you will not know how old the ketchup at the bottom of the bottles is.
Unpasteurized Cheese
Certain soft cheeses such as brie and camembert are not made from pasteurized milk, so it may contain contaminants. When it is pasteurized, the harmful organisms and bacteria are killed, so it will not contaminate the cheese. But with unpasteurized cheese, there is up to a 160 percent chance that listeria might be found in it. So if you eat from a cheese board in a restaurant, you have a good chance of getting infected with this, which can be deadly.
