At risk of sounding like a pansy (it must have been the initial pumpkin spice latte) I'm not sure I can keep up the pace of posting for every pastry I eat.
Case in point: Olive Garden's pumpkin cheesecake. I split a piece with Hillary, but I helped her maintain her girlish figure -- while destroying my own -- by eating well more than half the slice. As a special, it's not listed on the website's nutrition info, so I found the closest thing:
| Item | Calories | Total Fat (g) | Sat. Fat (g) | Sodium | Carb. (g) | Fiber (g) | Protein (g) |
| White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake | 890 | 62 | 36 | 490 | 70 | 6 | 13 |
Let's say I ate 2/3 of the slice. That's nearly 600 calories and 40 grams of fat.
From an evolutionary standpoint, I would be the ultimate champion. Men have been shown to eat more in the presence of women; some people speculate that it's a social construct affirming gender roles. Alternatively, it could just be a primitive fight-or-flight mechanism: Eat as much as possible when you have it, because the food might disappear without warning.
I vote for the latter, because who knows when this special menu item will disappear? Who is Olive Garden to determine the end of fall -- and, consequently, the end of autumn-flavored artery cement?
You could probably buy a whole cheesecake and freeze it for the off-season. Assume eight slices at 900 calories per slice, and that's the equivalent of two pounds' worth of energy. If you ate the whole cake sometime around Christmas, you could hibernate until March!
Not to mention the sweet dreams of having this delicious cake as your figurative "last meal." (Although, with the nutrition content, it could actually be your last meal. You might go to sleep and never wake up.)
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| You could make it at home...but why? |
Eat it: Thick, rich, delicious, flavorful, pumpkin! At $6.50, it's less than $1 per 100 calories -- take that, Nabisco!
Beat it: All that thick, rich, delicious, pumpkin flavor has to come from somewhere -- namely butter, cream cheese and sugar. Eat at your own risk.
