The All-You-Can-Eat Spa

• Published in: The Wall Street journal. Eastern edition
• Main Author: By Pooja Bhatia
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, N.Y Dow Jones & Company Inc 09.05.2003
• Edition: Eastern edition
• Subjects: Calories; Desserts; Food; Meals; Resorts & spas; Weight control
• ISSN: 0099-9660

Remember when spa cuisine meant tiny portions on big plates? After years of counting calories and pushing health, spas are moving into comfort food in a huge way, with deli dishes, five-star desserts and all-you-can-eat pasta bars. At Texas's luxurious Lake Austin Spa, the chef recently launched a five-course tasting menu, while Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Ariz., has ditched its no-fat frozen yogurt for real ice cream. And don't forget the brie-and-lobster-encrusted steak at the Spa at Norwich Inn in Connecticut. "Most guests understand they're not going to lose weight," says Daniel Chong-Jimenez, the chef there. How much fat are we talking about here? To find out, we went on an eating tour of some of the country's top spas -- and tested the meals for fat and calorie counts at a lab. Our goal was to see just how easily we could put on the pounds (not too hard with turkey reubens clocking in at 910 calories), convince the staff to break the meal rules and find any temptations nearby. (Memo to one spa: get rid of the candy machine by the front door). We had hoped to burn off a little fat in the fitness classes, but then found one spa whose sessions included smelling -- and then eating -- a Hershey's kiss. Our biggest discovery: just how fattening a lot of the stuff was -- and how wrong the menu calorie counts were. Of 17 dishes we tested, the spas had undercounted the calories by more than 10% in more than half of the cases. Some had twice as many calories as advertised. And watch out for the chicken fajita stacker at Florida's Doral Spa, which our lab said came in at 31 grams of fat -- more than a supersize order of McDonald's french fries. For their part, spas say the calorie counts are educational "guides" not intended to be taken as exact. They also point out they still offer plenty of low-fat, low-calorie fare.