The Center for Science in the Public Interest has issued this year’s Xtreme Eating Awards, bestowing honors on eight restaurant meals and one dessert that are so ridiculously unhealthy that they stand out even from the usual bad-for-you fare that permeates the nation.

These lists are always amusing, and perhaps useful, but for me, they’re starting to lose their shock value. It was never shocking that meals filled with unholy amounts of calories, fat, sugar, salt, and carbs aren’t good for you. What had been shocking was the amounts. For instance, the Cheesecake Factory‘s (CAKE) Pasta Carbonara contains 2,500 calories and an eye-popping (literally!) 85 grams of fat. That’s enough fat for four days for people who eat what should be a normal, human diet.

“Okay, bacon and cream are red flags,” says CSPI.  “But how bad could a pasta dish be?” Real bad. Calorie-wise, the dish is equivalent to the same restaurant’s Grilled Rib-Eye Steak with fries and onion rings, plus a piece of cheesecake. But the pasta still contains 25 more grams of fat. Insane.

And yet, perusing the list as a whole, with my now-jaded worldview resulting from reading and writing about this stuff for a few years, I can’t help but conclude that now matter how bad the meals are, common sense should dictate that you steer clear of all of them, before you even know the numbers. I know why CSPI bestows these awards, but in the end, if you want to lose weight and be healthy, you don’t go to a place called The Cheesecake Factory, and you don’t order a dessert called the Chocolate Tower Trouble Cake, another award-winner from the same chain.

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