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Over-sized appetizers, entrees, and desserts in USA restaurants are making Americans heavier and sicker, and the popular thing for restaurants to do is to make bad foods even more unhealthy. A new research poll shows that there’s more to those irresistible entree’s than meets the eye.

Most restaurant goers are oblivious to the fact that their favorite entrees could have the equivalent of two days worth of fat and salt and that in some cases, they’d be better off consuming a stick of butter than an starter at a common chain. Researchers state when people go out to eat, they have no idea how just how unhealthy the food is they are eating.

On Tuesday, the Washington, D.C.-based consumer group announced its 2009 Xtreme Eating Awards. Here are some of the favorites on the list.

1. Olive Garden’s Tour of Italy with lasagna, lightly-breaded chicken Parmigiana and creamy chicken alfredo served in one entree for 1,450 calories, 33 grams of saturated fat and 3,830 milligrams of sodium. The tally goes up if diners add breadsticks for 150 calories each and a plate of garden fresh salad with dressing for 350 calories.

2. Red Lobster Ultimate Fondue: With 1,490 calories, 40 grams of fat and 3,580 milligrams of sodium, this dish consists of shrimp and crabmeat in a creamy lobster cheese sauce served in a warm, crispy sourdough bowl.

3. Chili’s Big Mouth Bites: This is four mini-bacon-cheeseburgers served on a plate with fries, onion strings, and jalapeno ranch dipping sauce. (“Mini” is relative: each one is like a Quarter Pounder.) Like the “sliders” available at other chains, Chili’s Big Mouth Bites can be an appetizer or an entrée (these numbers are for the latter). 2,350 calories, 38 grams of saturated fat, and 3,940 milligrams of sodium.

4. Applebee’s Quesadilla Burger: Put a burger inside an already-stuffed quesadilla and what do you get? Not counting the fries that accompany it, 1,380 calories and 46 grams of saturated fat.

5. Red Lobster Ultimate Fondue: Offered as an appetizer, this combo of shrimp, crabmeat, lobster cream sauce, and sourdough bread bowl adds 750 calories and 20 grams of saturated fat—but only if you split it with your date.

6. The Cheesecake Factory Philly Style Flat Iron Steak with fries: 2,320 calories, 47 grams saturated fat, 5,340 milligrams sodium.

A lot of oversized appetizers, entrees and desserts at chain restaurants are nutritional train wrecks, reprots the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The illusion of value seems to be a coomon factor for restaurant goers– a reversion to the mind-set that the more food — and hence more calories — that we can get for our buck, the better. So noted Dr. David Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Ct.

Most people should eat no more than 2,000 calories, 20 grams of fat and 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day,  many of the meals on the list exceeded a person’s allotted calories for the day.