Coach Brian Parana (2:3.947) Orange chicken didn't become the top seller at Panda Express by accident. Chef Andy Kao built it sweeter and less spicy than traditional dishes. And it's made for the American taste on purpose because it would sell more. It worked. Orange chicken alone makes up more than a third of everything that this chain sells. And the company has moved more than 115 million pounds of this stuff in a single year. Coach Brian Parana (2:33.629) That's a lot of orange chicken. Here's what one order is actually going to cost you. Orange chicken is about 510 calories. The fried rice on the side, that almost everyone orders with it, is 620. That's 1100 calories before you get a drink or an egg roll touches your tray. Order that same combo once a week for a year, and you're looking at close to Coach Brian Parana (3:2.743) fifty nine thousand calories. Whoa, that is a lot. That works out to be about 17 pounds of fat from one weekly habit alone, if all else is equal, if you just stack this on top of what you normally do. By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what to order at Panda Express instead, to make it healthier and happier for you. This is Driven for Health episode number one fifty three. I'm Coach Brian Parana. Coach Brian Parana (3:31.362) I hope that you've been enjoying this road so far. This is our ninth stop in the restaurant journey. We've done burgers, pizza, Mexican fast food back to back. Today's a change of pace. The first Chinese American fast food chain in this whole series. This menu Coach Brian Parana (3:51.562) has got a big range on it, from one spectrum being super healthy and the other spectrum, wow, I didn't realize there's that many calories or fat in this option. And what you say out of your mouth and gets put on your plate will make a big difference in how it impacts your waistline. Let's jump into the tiered list. Nine orders, worst to best, because that's what everyone likes. The worst one, unfortunately, is fried rice. Two sides Coach Brian Parana (4:21.329) are just getting killed here. 620 calories, 13 grams of protein, 19 grams of fat. So kabam. That is a lot. A thousand milligrams of sodium and a hundred grams of carbs for a side dish. Holy moly, that's a lot of carbs. That's over probably 60, 70% of carbs that most guys need from their day. Coach Brian Parana (4:48.727) So this one is the side that eats like a second entree and never gets ordered like the first one, right? It's always just an add-on. Number two is Chow Mein, the noodly side dish. Three out of 10. 600 calories, 15 grams of protein, 23 grams of fat, and another thousand milligrams of sodium with 94 carbs. So it's still packing a wallop. It's very similar to the rice. Coach Brian Parana (5:17.857) These are just high calorie dense foods, generally served in large portions as well. The noodle side of this sounds a little bit lighter than the rice, but not by much, like 20 calories. So it's very comparable to each other. Number three is the honey walnut shrimp. It's a four out of 10. 430 calories, 13 grams of protein, and 28 grams of fat with 700 Coach Brian Parana (5:46.502) milligrams of sodium. Now we just have to remember that generally I'm encouraging guys to eat 40 to 50 grams of protein in one meal, and generally you're probably gonna have somewhat similar amounts of carbs in that meal as well. So when just the side dish has a hundred, you see the problem here, and you haven't eaten anything else. And the honey walnut shrimp unfortunately has some of the worst protein to fat ratio there. Coach Brian Parana (6:14.125) And that's something to pay attention to. It's the fat that they fry in that really bumps it up, because shrimp doesn't have any fat in it. And it's actually a great choice. But to get the amount of shrimp that you need to balance out that fat to protein ratio, that's really gonna turn this item into like a $15 deal here, just for that one thing, to get more shrimp. Number four, the Beijing beef, five out of 10, 470 calories, Coach Brian Parana (6:43.393) 14 grams of protein, 27 grams of fat. Again, guys, just throwing out the fat amount. Generally, if you're in a fat loss phase, we're looking for 50 to 60 total grams of fat. And that makes this pretty challenging here, for it being almost 50% of your fat intake for the day. The beef and the sauce are doing all the work here, and the protein really isn't, unfortunately. The legendary orange chicken comes in at number five. Coach Brian Parana (7:12.769) This is the six out of 10 of these. 510 calories, 16 grams of protein, but yet again, 24 grams of fat. When it's breaded and fried or oiled, that ends up costing you a lot. So this is the crowd favorite, the fan favorite, but it's got a very low amount of protein, unfortunately. And it's really hard to add more protein to it because it just adds more carbs and fats to that dish, which makes it Coach Brian Parana (7:42.572) more challenging. Number six is Kung Pao chicken. Alright, 320 calories. As you notice, the calories are going down. Mainly the fat's going down and the protein's going up a little bit. Now, with Kung Pao chicken, we have 17 grams of protein, 21 grams of fat, but a thousand milligrams of sodium. That's just again for this particular item, not with the Coach Brian Parana (8:9.075) rice or the chow mein or whatever other side you would get. This is better protein than beef because chicken in general has less fat in it, but it still has similar amounts of sodium. Why? Because you're getting a processed food that's delivered to you with convenience and ease. So you can just show up and eat it, and the preservatives and the salt are for taste and to make it be transported all over the US to then serve at the restaurants. Number seven Coach Brian Parana (8:39.129) is the mushroom chicken. 13 grams of protein, 14 grams of fat. So now we're starting to talk. We're getting a little bit closer to where protein and fat are somewhat equal. And this one ends up obviously being better. The 13 grams. Let's do some quick math here. [unclear] Coach Brian Parana (9:35.288) Number eight, and we round out with number nine here, or nine slash ten. There's a double whammy option here for the best on the list. String bean chicken breast, 210 calories, 12 grams of protein, 12 grams of fat. This one you could actually order two of, and it would make a reasonably good meal. I would still go sans the rice and chow mein to make it work. So string bean chicken breast is a big winner here, low sodium as well. Coach Brian Parana (10:0.745) And then black pepper sirloin steak and the grilled teriyaki chicken come in at the winners here. They have about 19 grams of protein with six grams of fat for the sirloin steak. That's a huge win. A lot of protein. This is the lowest amount of fat that we've seen. The grilled chicken teriyaki is 33 grams of protein, but Coach Brian Parana (10:27.111) it's 95 more calories there, and that ends up being the challenge. So gram for gram, the steak wins, but chicken teriyaki tastes great too. So when we're ordering, you need to pick one of those with the super greens instead of rice. Super greens are about 180 calories, or actually about like 130, 150 calories. So that ends up being, if you added the steak and the super greens together, Coach Brian Parana (10:56.151) we're looking at roughly 310 calories for 28 grams of protein. That ends up being a win. Or you do the grilled chicken teriyaki with the super greens. One interesting thing about the Panda Express: way back in 1987, orange chicken became that defining dish of Panda Express. Andy, the chef, Coach Brian Parana (11:22.593) developed it originally in Hawaii. I thought that was really interesting. And that's where some of maybe the sweeter sauce came in. I've been to Hawaii, as they say, on the island. We were in Oahu, in Honolulu, and we toured all over the island there. North Shore was ridiculous. I can't tell you how amazing it was swimming with sea turtles. We had this amazing shrimp sticky rice combo that was just -- we actually went twice to both places, Coach Brian Parana (11:51.314) even though we ended up having to drive like an hour to get there because of traffic. If you're familiar with Oahu, it's a big circle of highways, and just an amazing experience. But one thing happened with the orange chicken: in 2025 the company changed how the dish was made. It's looking for more ways to optimize and standardize the flavor. And originally the sauce was getting made at each kitchen, and now it comes pre-made in a bag. Well, Coach Brian Parana (12:21.163) customers noticed, employees noticed, the complaints started piling up. They said it was a stickier, messier sauce, and drier chicken than what the original version was. Well, Panda Express said, hey, we've kept our iconic chicken since the 1987 recipe at heart, and we just leveled it up with premium ingredients, no artificial flavors. So that was the big reason: to create consistency from one dish to another. So whichever Panda Express you go to, Coach Brian Parana (12:50.251) then you get that taste and flavor that you experience. And that's a trade-off. When you're a big corporation and Panda Express is doing mega money here, then it's really important to have that consistency across the board. So the menu's changed. One combination can run 1200 plus calories before a drink. And another one can be 350 calories. And that becomes the winner here of this: Coach Brian Parana (13:20.021) steak or chicken teriyaki with the super greens. So if Panda Express is on the way or around you, it would be reasonable for you to do it. They also have broccoli there too, which I love broccoli, so I would definitely say that. Well, let's get into the fast five here as we start to scoot to the end. My goal with these is to make them quick, easy to understand, which are the best ingredients and items to pick at each restaurant. Coach Brian Parana (13:50.112) So fast five, here we are. Who built Panda Express? Well, it was Andy and Peggy Cherng, a married couple, and they go back way before 1983, when Panda Express was actually first introduced in a mall. Number two, how did that first location actually happen? Well, there's a UCLA football coach. Terry Donahue's family developed the Glendale Galleria mall, and he had eaten Coach Brian Parana (14:18.953) at Panda, the original Panda Inn as it was called, and he connected with the mall. So he obviously loved their recipe and cooking and all that stuff. Number three, how many times does orange chicken get ordered? Well, 285,000 times a day, more than 100 million times a year. That is a lot of orange chicken being produced, hence why it needs to be standardized and why the company moved that way. Number four, Coach Brian Parana (14:48.353) how did this company start? Well, $60,000, and they bootstrapped their way to make this happen. And that's where a lot of small businesses start off. Anything that's been created, served by one or two people's ideas and then been created. Even my Call To Rise is my creation that I'm growing and bootstrapping along the way, to grow and impact more guys' lives, so they show up as a leader and live that legacy of a healthy, fit father, Coach Brian Parana (15:18.423) provider, husband, employer, employee, coworker, however you want to define yourself. And lastly, number five, what the heck is the real protein stack here? Well, we can order the bigger plate, one side three entrees. Alright, this is a win. It's officially on the menu. Most people never order it that way, but we can get the black pepper, the super greens, Coach Brian Parana (15:43.850) stacked without the rice, and we can get about six hundred and seventy calories and sixty six grams of protein. That's a big win, more than double the amount. And that gets us over that 40 to 50 grams. So that could be a really big winner that will hold you over for three to four plus hours, probably five to be honest. So I hope that number five was a sneaker there that you are still listening to. I purposely placed it near the end. So whatever brought you to Panda Express today, know that the black Coach Brian Parana (16:13.489) pepper sirloin steak is the winner here, and it's the strongest order. To get more on Panda Express and all these other restaurants, I just redid and recreated the Eating On The Go Guide website. It's go.brianparana.com/eatingonthegoguide, that's all one word. It'll be in the show notes. Very cool experience here, and Coach Brian Parana (16:43.529) I want to make sure that you grab it as we go so that you are winning here, right? We want you to win regardless of if you are eating at a restaurant or eating somewhere else as well. Now, if you want the full system, the big approach on how I help impact guys' lives, that's the Call To Rise. We've talked about it. This is what I do for a living. I crush it, Coach Brian Parana (17:11.585) helping men create sustainable long term success with nutrition, fitness, their mindset, the way they show up and think differently is incredible. And they do it in a supportive group of individuals to be held accountable. In fact, I recorded last night Joe's episode, which is coming out in the future. And then also Pablo, his is coming up today as a recording of these guys. Joe lost 20 pounds or more, and Pablo's about Coach Brian Parana (17:40.503) 25 to 30 pounds lost in 100 days, and they are crushing it. So jump to hear their stories here in the next couple episodes, probably in the 160s to 170-ish range. Those guys will pop up. So a little foreshadow of things coming ahead after we get done with this series here. That's thecalltorise.com. Coach Brian Parana (18:5.661) If anyone you know goes out to eat, share these episodes with them, share the guide with them, share and leave a review. And that's it for Driven for Health this episode. So train hard, eat smart, and I'll catch you in the next one.
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