The Bacon Calculator: How Many Slices of Bacon Does Your Dinner Equal?

3 restaurant shockers and what to order instead.

Some restaurant menu items have the same amount of saturated fat you'd consume if you ate more than 30 pieces of bacon. When we develop recipes in the EatingWell Test Kitchen that use bacon, we use it sparingly; 1 medium strip of bacon has 43 calories and 1.1 grams of saturated fat.

The American Heart Association recommends limiting intake of saturated fats to less than 7 percent of daily calories. (That’s 16 grams, if you’re consuming 2,000 calories.) That’s because saturated fats raise levels of LDL ("bad") cholesterol in the blood, damaging the heart and arteries, triggering inflammation that may eventually leading to a heart attack or stroke.

Here's we look at how much bacon you'd have to eat to get the amount of saturated fat in some popular restaurant menu items, plus healthier alternatives to order and recipes you can make at home.

—Hilary Meyer, associate food editor for EatingWell

Restaurant 1: Uno Chicago Grill »