Olive Garden Pasta Pass Scam? 4 Reasons Not To Buy Never Ending Pasta Bowl

Olive Garden is offering 21,000 customers the opportunity to participate in its Never Ending Pasta Bowl promotion. For $100, purchasers of the pass can get unlimited pasta any day of the week for seven weeks. The sale, which starts Thursday at 1:30 p.m. ET, not only gives pass holders unlimited pasta but also unlimited soft drinks from Oct. 3 until Nov. 20.

While the idea of unlimited pasta sounds like a great deal, potential customers may want to rethink purchasing the $100 pass. Check out these four reasons why you should not purchase the Never Ending Pasta Bowl.

1. It can kill you.

Unless you are burning thousands of calories a day, having an unlimited pass to pasta is definitely unhealthy. Not only are you likely to gain weight during these seven weeks but you put your body at risk for diabetes, a heart attack and high blood pressure. A bowl of chicken Alfredo at Olive Garden is 2,320 calories and has 1,480 mg of sodium. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that adults and children 14 years old and over should digest less than 2,300 mg per day. Depending on your age and level of physical activity, the USDA recommends an adult woman's calorie intake per day should range from 1,000 to 2,400 calories and adult men should take in 2,000 to 3,000 calories per day.

2. There is a chance that you may not get your money’s worth in pasta.

Pasta bowls at Olive Garden start at $9.99, which means in those seven weeks you would have to make at least 10 trips to the restaurant to get your money's worth. Let’s not forget that since the Never Ending Pasta Bowl promotion is dine-only, you will have to sit down to eat and proper etiquette calls for you to tip your server.

3. It isn’t for a good cause.

If the Never Ending Pasta Bowl passes sell out, Olive Garden will rake in $2.1 million and will keep it all. Restaurants like IHOP, however, have promotions in which customers are given a free short stack of buttermilk pancakes and are asked to consider leaving a donation for a charity. IHOP typically donates the money to children’s hospitals.

4. You may not have the opportunity to try every dish on the unlimited pasta menu.

In 2014, a blogger named “Vino” told the Huffington Post that there are 180 pasta combinations available during the Never Ending Pasta Bowl promotion. This number could have changed over the past two years but it’s unlikely that customers will be able to try every dish unless they use Vino’s method. “I eat one pasta for lunch and 3 for dinner, and there are 49 days,” he told the publication.

Vino added, “If I keep up this pace, I should actually finish all 180 before the promotion ends.”