The Olive Garden is a chain of Italian-restaurants with hundreds of locations across the United States. One of the appetizer offerings is a chicken gnocchi soup, made with roasted chicken, potato dumplings and spinach. Understanding the nutrition information can help you decide how this food fits into your nutrition plan.
Calories and Macronutrients
The chicken gnocchi soup contains 250 calories per serving. It has 8g of fat, 3g of which are saturated. The soup also contains 29g of carbohydrates per serving.
Sodium Considerations
The soup provides 1,180mg of sodium per serving. The Institute of Medicine recommends sticking to just 1,500mg per day. If you have the soup as an appetizer, and then follow it with an entree such as chicken parmigiana with 3,000mg of sodium, you more than double your daily limits.
Alternatives
The chicken gnocchi soup is the highest calorie soup on the appetizer menu. The pasta e fagioli soup contains just 130 calories with 680mg of sodium. Minestrone soup contains just calories, but more than 1,000mg of sodium per serving. The Zuppa Toscano has 170 calories and more than 900mg of sodium.
Other Menu Items
While the chicken gnocchi soup may be high in calories compared to other soups on the menu, it is still a better choice, in terms of nutrition, than many other appetizer options. The chicken Alfredo pizza appetizer, for example, contains 1,180 calories. The Lasagna Fritta contains 1,030 calories with 63g of fat. A green salad, with low-fat dressing or no dressing is the lowest calorie and lowest fat appetizer option.
Caution
The portions you find in a restaurant like the Olive Garden are up to 60 percent larger than serving sizes at home, reports an October 21, 2008 issue of "USA Today." A homemade chicken and gnocchi soup can contain far fewer calories and less sodium if prepared with low-sodium chicken broth, homemade gnocchi and skinless, boneless breast of chicken. Visit restaurants for special occasions, rather than as a nightly event.
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