I love me some Italian food.

I lived at Fazoli's, a fast-food Italian restaurant back East, when I was in college. Frugatti's is my favorite place to eat in Bakersfield. Give me pasta, sauce, maybe some meatballs and bread sticks and I am a ragazza felice (happy girl).

But maybe this is why I haven't lost any serious weight since I gained my freshman 15 in college.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a national nutritional watch-dog group, has two popular Italian eateries in its cross hairs. The group analyzed popular dishes from Olive Garden and Romano's Macaroni Grill and came back with some startling findings.

I currently live near an Olive Garden, but I'll never indulge in its spaghetti and meatballs again.

I tried to double check the center's figures for Olive Garden on the restaurant's Web site but, not so surprisingly, it only lists nutritional information for food on its "Garden Fare" menu. ("When you're here, you're family," as its slogan goes, but I guess you're also uninformed.) The center's information matches the numbers provided on Macaroni Grill's site.

The center's findings and comments about Olive Garden:

• Lasagna Classico. 1,060 calories and 28 grams of bad fat (saturated plus trans fat). It's like eating a BK Quad Stacker from Burger King, which has four beef patties, four slices of cheese and eight strips of bacon.
• Five Cheese Ziti al Forno. 1,190 calories and 26 grams of bad fat. You might as well just order two McDonald's Quarter Pounders with Cheese or two Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pepperoni Pizzas.
• Spaghetti and Meatballs. You can expect 1,260 calories and a day's worth of saturated fat (19 grams). That's equal to the calories in three McDonald's Quarter Pounders. (If that seems like a lot to swallow, it's half of what you'd get in Macaroni Grill's version with meat sauce.)
• Linguine alla Marinara. The center's lab tests found 790 calories in this dish — more than the 550 calories the chain reports. Capellini Pomodoro, pasta with tomatoes, garlic, basil and olive oil, also had more calories that the company stated (990 as opposed to 640). But both dishes had only two grams of saturated fat.
• Olive Garden Picks: "Garden Fare" items such as Venetian Apricot Chicken (The center lists 450 calories; the restaurant: 448) and Shrimp Primavera (The center: 690 calories; Olive Garden: 706) are among the best choices.

And for Romano's Macaroni Grill:

• Fettuccine Alfredo. Macaroni Grill's version lives up to the "heart attack on a plate" reputation with 1,130 calories and 53 grams of saturated fat -- more than 21/2 days' worth. (Olive Garden's version had a few more calories but "only" 11/2 days' worth of bad fat.) People who wouldn't dream of eating a pound of prime rib might not guess that this is roughly equivalent.
• Spaghetti and Meatballs with meat sauce. Romano's rendition of this classic dish provides more than an entire day's calories (2,430) and nearly three days' worth of saturated fat -- an astonishing 57 grams. If you like meat, you could eat six Quarter Pounders for the same effect on your waistline.
• New York Cheesecake or Tiramisu. Order a roughly 1,000-calorie slice of cheesecake or tiramisu and you might as well finish off your meal with an untrimmed 16-ounce T-bone steak with five pats of butter. The cheesecake and tiramisu each have about two days' worth of saturated fat; the deep-fried Dessert Ravioli has 1,630 calories and 11/2 days' bad fat.
• Romano's Macaroni Grill Picks: Two grilled entrees -- Pollo Magro "Skinny Chicken" and Simple Salmon -- come with broccoli and asparagus and have a modest 330 and 590 calories, respectively. Each is deemed "Sensible Fare" on the menu.

Keep in mind that these numbers don't include Macaroni Grill's peasant bread or Olive Garden's unlimited bread sticks and salad, said the center's nutrition director Bonnie F. Liebman in a news release.

"You'd have to walk briskly for 11 hours or jog an entire marathon to burn off 2,800 calories," she said in the release. "But frankly, the only activity most people can devote that kind of time to is sitting in front of a television or computer. No wonder so many Americans are now the shape of a meatball."