How Many Calories... in a Bloomin' Onion?

One of my first jobs was as a waitress at Outback Steakhouse. The most popular appetizer we sold, by far, was the Bloomin' Onion. Other restaurants have their own versions and they're all basically the same thing: a huge sweet onion that's been cut, breaded and deep fried, served with some kind of dipping sauce.

The entire time I worked at Outback, I never got sick of eating the Bloomin' Onions that the cooks would give us for for free when they accidentally made too many. They're delicious. They're pretty. It didn't bother us that if we didn't eat them when the were hot and freshly cooked they became a slimy, greasy brown wad within an hour.

We knew back then that all of those Bloomin' Onions were unhealthy, but now I wonder just how bad they really were. How many calories are in a whole Bloomin' Onion from Outback Steakhouse?

A) 820 calories
B) 1450 calories
C) 1780 calories
D) 2210 calories

A whole Bloomin' Onion with an average serving of dipping sauce contains about D) 2210 calories. Ouch, ouch, ouch! (Comparable fried onion appetizers at other restaurants will have comparable calorie totals.)

Most likely you'll share this appetizer with one to three other people, but the calorie total is still likely to be nearly 1000 calories per person, and that's before you've even started your meal. Not to mention that the total fat content is 134 grams, meaning that if you ate one half of the onion you'd have consumed more than your daily recommended fat intake for the entire day!