Perhaps you’ve had a long day shopping and it’s time for a sit-down and a bite to eat, or maybe you just want something quick, easy, and personalized on your lunch break, but whatever your reason, you’ve chosen a meal at chipotle.
You may be thinking that you’ve picked a fairly healthy option, it’s just a wrap with some protein and veggies, right?
Much better than going to a greasy burger joint or picking apart deep-fried chicken.
Well, all chipotle-lovers may want to cover their eyes right about now, because I have some bad news to deliver.
A chipotle burrito can be upwards of 1000 calories and can also have approximately half your daily sodium intake. So no, it’s really not any healthier than your other fast-food joints.
Of course, Chipotle is a store where you can customize your meals so the calorie amount for each burrito will differ slightly from person to person, depending on how packed you like your burrito.
In this article, we’ll delve a little deeper into the nutritional value of a chipotle burrito.
Chipotle Ingredients
Let’s keep in mind that chipotles customization options leave space for over 65,000 combinations for the different menu items.
So it would be impossible for me to list quite all the ways you can create a burrito and what the calorie intake for each item would be.
So instead, we’ve got a list of the ingredients separately, and how many calories they contain.
But then we’ve also got to keep in mind that each worker will scoop those options slightly differently, so the calorie intake may vary.
From this, we can see that the average for most burritos is going to be around 1085-1550 calories, which is quite a lot.
Sure, you can try and keep the calories down as much as possible but even just a tortilla with nothing but a portion of chicken and fajita veggies is 500 calories, and that going to be a very small and basic burrito.
Anything actually filling is going to be quite caloric.
Would You Like A Side With That?
If your typical burrito order doesn’t finish there (don’t worry, neither does mine) and you like to treat yourself to a side of chips too, you’re going to be bumping up the calories even further.
Especially if you like to dip your chips in some salsa – and let’s face it who likes a dry chip?
So as you can see, if you’ve ordered a stacked-up burrito with most of the trimmings, you’re likely already consuming upwards of 1550 calories, add on any of the chip sides are you are surpassing 2000 calories.
This is over a female’s recommended daily calories and just 500 calories under a male’s daily calorie recommendations.
Can I Tempt You With A Margarita?
I’m always a little dubious of a cocktail made anywhere except a cocktail bar, but these Chiptole boozy beverages aren’t half bad.
But they do continue to bump up the calorie intake for your meal.
If you choose to wash down your food with a margarita these are the extra calories you’ll be consuming:
Sauze Margarita – 230 Calories
Patron Margarita – 240 Calories
Track Your Nutrition
I do have to give it to Chiptole, for making this super handy nutrition tracker.
This is a great tool that lets you customize the order that you’d like.
You can pick your meal, the protein, the veggies, and sauces, and you can let them know if you’d like less or more of certain items.
All the while it will track how many calories you are consuming, and the amount of fat, protein, and carbs in a small circular graph.
A quick click on the ‘nutritional information’ then leads you to further statistics about the meal that you have chosen.
I must say, I tried it quickly with my regular order, and was so shocked at the results.
While I had always known that it was likely to be calorific, I had never thought about the fat and sodium intake.
In a double chicken burrito with white rice, black beans, guac, fresh tomato salsa, sour cream, fajita veggies, lettuce, and cheese, you’re looking at a whopping 68g of fat. 23g of those fats are saturated fats.
And more shockingly the sodium intake was a massive 3070mg which is 770mg over the daily recommended allowance.
This app is great for those tracking their nutrition, but it is certainly an eye-opener too.
Final Thoughts
As with any takeaway, a fast-food meal, one every once in a while is absolutely fine.
I’m not going to tell you never to eat chipotle again – I couldn’t do that myself.
However, you may want to think about cutting back on the amount that you consume if you eat them regularly.
This is because they are so high in calories, saturated fats, and sodium.
And just because something contains veggies and relatively ‘healthy’ looking food doesn’t always mean that it’s good for you.
Sure there are ways to make your Chipotle order lower in calories but either way, it should be seen as a treat and not a consistent healthy option, considering some burritos have almost a whole day’s worth of calories in them.
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