The Olive Garden Soup That's One Of The Healthiest Things On The Menu

Olive Garden is easily the Italian chain restaurant with the most locations, and its competition doesn't even come close. However, the chain isn't exactly well known for high-quality food. But unless you have access to better Italian chains, you've probably spent more than a few meals feeling like family.

When you do visit your local Olive Garden, it can be difficult to find menu options that aren't loaded with fats and cholesterol, not to mention enough sodium to stop your heart and enough calories to feed a stable full of horses. But there are healthy options at Olive Garden if you know where to look.

The easiest menu sections to peruse for healthy options are the soups and salads, with the chain's minestrone soup being a particular standout. Not only is it lacking in the worst ingredients, but it's also packing some genuinely healthy nutrients.

When you compare Olive Garden's minestrone soup to other soups on the menu, and also to a bowl of straight alfredo sauce for comparison's sake, the numbers truly stand out. That starts with its fat content. One bowl of minestrone only has a single gram of fat and zero saturated fats. That's stark compared to the lunch-sized portion of the alfredo's 45g of fat and 27g of saturated fat (a staggering 55% and 135%, respectively, of your suggested daily value), or the 15g of fat (19%) and 7g of saturated fat (35%) in the fattiest soup, the zuppa toscana.

Another amazing zero the minestrone boasts is its cholesterol count. This is deeply impressive compared to the alfredo's awful 140 mg (47% of your daily value) and the chicken and gnocchi soup's 55 mg (18%), the highest-cholesterol soup. The minestrone could do with less sodium though, at 810 mg or 35% of your daily value. That's not as much as the chicken and gnocchi soup's 1290 mg (56%), but it is, interestingly enough, more than the alfredo's 600 mg (26%).

But eating healthy is about more than avoiding the bad, you've also got to seek out the good. For the minestrone soup, thanks to its plentiful veggies and beans, that means a decent amount of fiber at 4 grams (or 14% of your daily value) and 5 grams of protein (10%). The alfredo doesn't have any fiber, but it does have 8 grams of protein (16%) from all the cheese. Meanwhile, the minestrone has the most fiber of all the soups (the others have 1 to 3 grams), though it does have the least protein. The chicken and gnocchi soup has the most at 11 grams or 22%. Regardless, it's good to note that most of the nutritional aspects of Olive Garden's minestrone soup make it one of the healthiest options you can order.