If you’ve been to Chipotle recently, you’ve likely spotted the sign for their “featured item:” A chorizo burrito. The photo drips pork sausage and white rice and black beans, shown oozing from an overstuffed flour tortilla. Under the tempting image the sign boasts, “300 CALORIES.”
No, you haven’t entered a fever dream state where burritos full of greasy pig and simple carbs don’t make you fat. This creation is literally impossible under one thousand calories, and a few LA dudes are attempting to see this false advertising through to justice.
.@ChipotleTweets I love you, but I'm gonna cry foul on a 300 calorie burrito. Rice and beans alone are 300…. pic.twitter.com/n3vkdWhmi6
— OC RunnergirlⓋ (@OCRunner) October 20, 2016
David Desmond, filed a complaint this week in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, according to LAist, claiming that he “felt excessively full and realized that the burrito couldn’t have been just 300 calories,” after eating the entire thing. He soon found solidarity in the suffering of others. From LAist:
Edward Gurevich purchased an uncannily similar burrito at a Chipotle location in Burbank, he too was alarmed at the burrito’s apparent size. Though he was also under the impression he burrito he purchased contained only 300 calories, the burrito he ultimately consumed likely contained three to four times that value. The same thing happened to Young Hoon Kim, who also claims he felt bloated after he consumed a purportedly 300 calorie burrito at a Chipotle location inside the Century City Westfield mall.
If you’re feeling victimized, there’s hope for your food baby woes: They’re claiming this could be grounds for a class action lawsuit, on behalf of everyone who’s eaten at Chipotle in the past four years.
Crunching the numbers in Chipotle’s own nutrition calculator, busts 300 calories before even adding anything to that parachute-sized tortilla. Stuffing in all of the ingredients listed on that ad — chorizo, white rice, black beans, fresh tomato salsa, a “sprinkle” of cheese — tips the scale at around 1025 calories, 315 of which come from fat. Maybe that’s what the sign means? Calories from fat? Sure, why not. But you’re also getting 2690 milligrams of sodium, about 390 milligrams more than the max amount the FDA recommends for adults.
For some fast food perspective, a Big Mac is about half as bad for you, and treating an entire medium cheese pizza from Domino’s as a personal pie would only be a little bit worse. Do what you will with that information.
