A trip to Costco isn't really a trip to Costco without a stop at the Costco Food Court. Not really a food court in the shopping mall sense, it's more of a snack bar attached to a kitchen that churns out fast food items with remarkable speed and consistency. The Costco Food Court, which is full of secrets, gets just a couple more bucks out of customers who have already spent so much because it's the only hot and ready food source on the premises, and because the food is so cheap -- a few bucks for a giant hot dog and a soda or a big slice of pepperoni pizza is just too good to pass up.
From the frozen desserts and sandwiches to the snacks and salads, the offerings are quite tasty. But, there's another price to be paid: Most every item on that menu is woefully calorically dense and or is loaded with too much saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, or sugar. According to the U.S.D.A.'s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a reasonably active adult can healthily consume about 2,000 calories a day, along with no more than 65 total grams of fat, 20 grams of saturated fat, 300 milligrams of cholesterol, 2,400 milligrams of sodium, and 300 grams of carbohydrate (including a limit of 50 grams of added sugars). Based on those recommendations, these are the most nutritionally dangerous items up for sale at the Costco Food Court.
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A sandwich is almost always available at the Costco Food Court, although the exact nature of that seemingly healthy and sensible option changes with relative frequency. The Costco Food Court sold a Hot Turkey & Provolone Sandwich until the early 2020s, when it was replaced by a $10 roast beef sandwich. Expensive and not very popular, Costco eliminated that item after about a year and installed a Turkey Swiss Sandwich in 2024. Like its predecessors, this sandwich is attractively hardy but also seems like it might be healthy -- turkey is well-known for its high-protein, low-fat profile, and a little bit of cheese and bread aren't the most caloric of accompaniments.
It turns out that Costco's humble, straightforward Turkey Swiss Sandwich can stake a claim as the unhealthiest thing to ever appear on its Food Court menu, containing more negative nutrition than even the pizza slices and huge hot dogs. It's got 900 calories, the most of any one item available, along with 49 grams of total fat and 15 grams of saturated fat -- around 75% of the U.S.D.A's recommended daily limit in both categories. It's salty, too -- too much sodium is bad for the heart, and this sandwich has 2,210 milligrams of it, or more than 90% of what one should top out at over a whole day.
Probably the most distinctive and trademark menu item at the Costco Food Court is the Chicken Bake. It's so original that it isn't found anywhere else in the American food landscape except for in bulk and uncooked in the frozen food section inside of the Costco proper. Akin to a pot pie housed in a cheddar cheese-caked and hollowed out breadstick, the Chicken Bake is made with pizza dough, large poultry chunks, green onions, multiple kinds of cheese, bacon, and a creamy Caesar salad dressing. It's all served up piping hot.
That's a lot of savory, creamy, fatty, and salty ingredients, and they all add up to make the Chicken Bake very tasty and also extremely diet-unfriendly. It's good that it feels like an all-in-one meal because it has as much or more energy that one can get from a lunch or dinner -- a Chicken Bake adds 840 calories to one's daily count. The fat content is relatively high, too -- 32 grams total, or about half of the U.S.D.A.'s recommended daily total. The 11 grams of saturated fat is more than half of an adult's limit for one day, while the 2,650 milligrams of sodium surpasses the healthy upper limit of 2,400 milligrams.
Costco retired its cinnamon-and-sugar-covered churro in 2024. Costco's new chocolate chip cookie arrived soon thereafter, replacing the long doughnut. The Double Chocolate Chunk Cookie, as it's officially known, is not only several magnitudes larger than the average oven-baked or packaged chocolate chip cookie, but it's about twice as thick as one, too.
The size of the thing -- along with a menu board touting that the product is made with authentic butter and a lot of it -- let the Costco Food Court customer know ahead of time that the Double Chocolate Chunk Cookie isn't going to be light on the calories, fat, or sugar. Still the newest sweet treat on offer at the Costco Food Court, the cookie is also objectively the unhealthiest. It's big enough to share, but if you eat the whole thing by yourself, you'll consume 750 calories, about 37% of a typical adult's entirely daily need. The cookie also boasts 35 grams of fat, of which 20 is the dangerous saturated fat -- 100% of the U.S.D.A.'s suggested daily limit. It's also got a lot of sugar -- 65 grams in all, well exceeding the recommended 50 grams.
The word "salad" should be a clue that a menu item is a healthier selection. It conjures images of mixed vegetables and fruits, along with plenty of other toppings and additions that transform the dish from a pile of ingredients into a flavorful melange of tastes and textures. Salads are a commonplace alternative to the greasier options that dominate fast-food menus, and even the Costco Food Court sells its take on the omnipresent chicken caesar salad. It's a standard preparation at Costco, but this one is really big. That's just one of the reasons why this assumedly healthful entree winds up being one of the most deceptively and highly caloric and fat- and sodium-rich items on the menu board.
Onto a base of mostly lettuce, Costco Food Court employees toss on generous portions of chicken, croutons, and Parmesan cheese bits, and they include a substantial cup of thick, rich, and creamy caesar salad dressing. The non-lettuce ingredients, particularly if you use the entire portion of dressing, provide the bulk of the 710 calories as well as its 38 grams of total fat and 1990 milligrams of sodium. This isn't a salad for light eaters, as it accounts for around a third of an adult's daily caloric need, more than half of their fat intake, and more than half of all the salt you should get in a day.
With a network of nearly 600 locations across the United States, Costco sells a lot of pizza. A full pie costs about $10, and while it's easy to bring one home, it's even more convenient to just order up a slice from the Costco Food Court (and upgrade it for free). It's so large and thin that it flops over the side of a paper plate, and the very cheesy or amply pepperoni-covered piece can be yours for only about two dollar. The Food Court makes money on the endeavor because Costco slices up its pizza to uniform perfection and uses robots.
Neither cheese nor pepperoni pizza is anybody's idea of health food. The dough is necessarily made with nutritionally vacant white flour, while that cheese is made up primarily of fat and salt. All that stuff tastes wonderful, but the ingredients objectively unhealthy. Just one slice of Costco Food Court pizza in the cheese-only variety has 710 calories, 27 grams of fat, and 1,780 milligrams of sodium. That's around a third of an adult's full day calorie requirement, more than half their fat limit, and two-thirds of their U.S.D.A'-recommended sodium intake. Oddly enough, a slice of the pepperoni is slightly healthier than the cheese. Costco uses less cheese on the pepperoni version, and in the end, a slice of that stuff has 60 fewer calories, three fewer grams of fat, and 40 fewer milligrams of sodium.
An ice cream sundae for $2.49 and made with real ice cream (not like Dairy Queen's highly processed soft serve) is a bargain. It's hard to pass up upon one's exit through the Costco Food Court. It's a simple affair, too, consisting of a tall and wide plastic cup filled to the top with vanilla ice cream and then drenched with self-swirling layers of sweetened strawberry sauce or chocolate syrup.
The vanilla ice cream that Costco uses for the Food Court sundaes is made up of little more than dairy products and sugars, which means there's going to be a lot of fat, sugar, and calories before the customer's choice of sauce even comes into play. A serving of plain ice cream contributes 550 calories, about a meal's worth of nutritional energy, and 56 grams of sugar, which is six more than the U.S.D.A. says an adult should eat over an entire day. Adding berries adds another 100 calories and 21 extra grams of sugar, while the chocolate sauce brings in 140 more calories and nine more sugar grams.
Not everything available at the Costco Food Court is listed or pictured on the big menu boards hanging down from the ceiling. The to-go eatery sells two sweet and chilled coffee-based drinks, including the advertised and displayed Cold Brew Mocha Freeze and its sibling beverage, the Cold Brew Latte Freeze, which is available via one of the self-ordering kiosks installed in Costcos in recent years.
Made from cold brewed Colombian coffee, plenty of chocolate syrup, and dairy products, the Mocha Freeze packs a wallop of caffeine and calories primarily derived from sugar. A standard 16-ounce serving contains 580 calories and 111 grams of sugar -- more than double what the U.S.D.A. says the average adult should consume in a day. The Cold Brew Latte Freeze, which is the exact same drink as the Mocha Freeze but with the chocolate syrup left out, still boasts a meal's worth of calories and about two days' worth of sugar with 470 and 96 grams, respectively.
The promise of one of Costco's legendary Food Court hot dogs just might get more people through the doors of the store than the idea of buying housewares and pantry staples in bulk. It's just such a great deal -- an oversized hot dog that hangs off both sides of a bun, served warm with as many toppings as a member might want and a 20-ounce soda cup with free refills, all for $1.50. It's such a distinctive part of the Costco experience and perceived as such a benefit by Costco customers and employees that company co-founder W. Craig Jelinek quipped to onetime CEO Jim Sinega that if he were to ever raise the price on the beloved hot dog and soda combo, he'd murder him. It's been stuck at a buck and a half for 40 years and counting.
It's at least a cost-efficient food source. A Costco hot dog with no toppings contains 580 calories, 34.5 grams of fat, 12.5 grams of saturated fat, and 1,620 milligrams of sodium. Calorically, that's less than a third of what the U.S.D.A. says the average adult should consume in a day, but the other figures are more problematic. That hot dog gives more than half of a person's daily fat requirement, reaches 60% of the saturated fat limit, and goes over half of the daily salt need.
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