Here are the things to never eat in a restaurant

Avoid these common foods to minimize your risk of food poisoning on your next meal out. there are some menu items to never order at a restaurant, no matter how much you love the place.

From drastically overpriced to downright dirty, there are some menu items to never order at a restaurant, no matter how much you love the place. We spoke to food safety experts, dietitians, and chefs and compiled a list of things you should completely avoid on your next meal out.

Free bar snacks

Since these nuts, pretzels, and other munchies are free of charge, restaurants and bars often don’t set out a fresh serving for each new customer. It’s like eating out of a stranger’s hand! Then at closing time, they’re dumped back into a container, to be re-poured into dishes the next day.

The value meal

It can be tempting to order off the value menu at a fast food restaurant to get the most bang for your buck. But one double cheeseburger, fries, and drink could add up to 1,100 calories and nearly 50 grams of fat. And chowing down may have immediate consequences. After healthy people ate a high-fat meal, their blood pressure was higher when  compared to when face with a stressor they ate a low-fat one, found research from the Journal of Nutrition.

Raw Oysters

Candess Zona-Mendolla, a food safety advocate and editor of MakeFoodSafe.com, says raw oysters are one of the riskiest choices on the menu at even the best fresh seafood joints. “These mollusks are carriers of two scary foodborne illnesses—Norovirus and Vibrio. Ever heard about flesh-eating bacteria? That’s Vibrio. We see a rise in cases during the summer months, as Vibrio loves warm waters. If oysters have been cooked, they are a-ok to eat.” Google a picture, and we promise raw seafood won’t be on your dinner plate for a long time.r plate for a long time.

Meat with the bone in

Small cuts of meat, like bone-in pork or chicken breasts, are harder to cook thoroughly because their outsides easily char. This often translates to crispy on the outside and raw on the inside. Unlike undercooked beef—say, a rare burger or a steak tartare—undercooked pork and chicken are highly dangerous and could cause food-borne illnesses, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Bottled Ketchup on the Table

Former server Aaron Norris says condiments, especially ketchup in glass jars, is always something to avoid. The restaurant staff often spends hours at the end of long shifts marrying partially empty bottles, so there’s no way to tell how long the stuff at the bottom has been there…leading to sour and sometimes even explosive ketchup.

Bread with olive oil

If you can dip responsibly, feel free to ignore this tip. But most of us are mopping up olive oil with hunks of bread, polishing off hundreds of calories before the meal even starts, says Joan Salge Blake, RD, a clinical associate professor at Boston University and the author of the textbook Nutrition & You. Because olive oil is good for your health, you may think of it as a “free” food, she points out. However, tablespoon for tablespoon, it contains more calories than butter. “And you tend to go easier on butter,” she says.

Meatloaf

First, there’s often more filler than meat, but restaurants think if they drown the dish in enough sauce and seasoning, you won’t notice. To help sell it further, many menus use descriptive words like “homemade,” “home-cooked,” “home-style,” or worst of all, “Mom’s.” Don’t insult your mama!

Never Order Fish on a Monday

In Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, he wrote that it’s likely that your Monday fish special can include fillets that are three days old. Bourdain, who spent most of his culinary career in New York City kitchens, said in the book that since most seafood markets aren’t open on weekends, Monday’s fish is old and, well, fishy.

The Soup Special

A soup special is a perfect way to disguise the scraps from yesterday’s leftovers as a new and fresh dish today…and tomorrow.

Ice cream

Unless it’s exotic or made in-house, it’s not worth your time, money, or caloric intake. “The idea of dropping big dollars in a restaurant to pay for the same brand I can get from the local grocery doesn’t make me want any,” says Mark Ladisky, senior operations consultant for Synergy Restaurant Consultants.

Drinks with free refills

Having seltzer? Fine. Black coffee? Also good (just limit yourself to about three cups). But soda or sweetened iced tea? Not so much. A soda at a popular restaurant chain packs around 120 calories. Not bad—until you consider it has 33 grams of sugar, the equivalent of more than 8 teaspoons of the white stuff. Get one refill or two, and you’ve suddenly sucked down 24 teaspoons of sugar. That’s four times the amount of added sugar the American Heart Association recommends women have in an entire day.

Chips and salsa 

The problem isn’t eating a few chips—or dipping them in salsa, which is actually loaded with healthful antioxidants. It’s that, at many restaurants, the basket is bottomless. “Our natural inclination is to eat and drink what is in front of us, but with such an abundance of food, we need to build in restraints that prevent us from overdoing it,” says Dr. Cohen. “We are designed to be able to consume more than we need.” Since it’s exhausting to battle biology, ask the server to hold the chips and salsa.