A wok on the wild side.

An order of House Lo Mein with as much salt as a whole Pizza Hut Cheese Pizza? An order of Kung Pao Chicken with almost as much fat as four Quarter Pounders? An order of Moo Shu Pork with more than twice the cholesterol of two Egg McMuffins?

According to a recent report by the Food Marketing Institute and Prevention Magazine, 52 percent of all Americans say that Chinese food is "more healthful" than their usual diet.

If only they knew.

THE GREAT STIR-OFF

No one's ever looked--really looked--at just how good (or bad) Chinese food is. So we recently decided to find out.

We bought dinner-size take-out portions of 15 popular dishes from 20 mid-priced Chinese restaurants in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and San Francisco. Then we shipped them to an independent lab to be analyzed for calories, fat, saturated fat, and sodium. Cholesterol we estimated by weighing the ingredients in each dish.

Soup and egg roll aside, what we found would make your chopsticks splinter.

* Fat ranged from a respectable 19 grams (Szechuan Shrimp or Stir-Fried Vegetables) to an outrageous 76 grams (Kung Pao Chicken). That's more than you should eat in an entire day, and more than 40 percent of calories. (Most experts recommend a 30-percent limit. We say 20 percent.)

* Other than Sweet and Sour Pork, the lowest-sodium dinner (Stir-Fried Vegetables) had over 2,100 mg--about your quota for a day. The highest-sodium plate (House Lo Mein) clocked in at an incredible 3,460 mg.

* On the plus side, the saturated fat was lower than you'll find in most American food. Only once (Moo Shu Pork) did it hit the ten percent of calories that most experts recommend. About half the dishes were even below our seven-percent limit. But many contained at least a day's worth of cholesterol. Good old Moo Shu Pork had a two-day supply.

With numbers like those, it's a good thing it's easy to turn almost any dish into a healthy one. It's simple, convenient, and cheap. It's spelled R-I-C-E, and it's the first of our "Three Steps to Healthy Chinese."

Step 1. One Cup Entree, One Cup Rice. The more rice you pile on, the more portions you create, and the less fat and sodium each one has. That's more like the healthy Chinese diet you think you're getting down at your local Hard Wok Cafe.

For example, one of the nastiest dishes is Kung Pao Chicken. A dinner portion without the rice averaged 1,275 calories, 75 grams of fat (13 of them saturated), and more than 2,600 mg of sodium. That's about a day's worth of fat and sodium crammed into one entree.

But if you add one cup of rice to every cup of Kung Pao and then divide it into two-cup portions (split it with friends, take some to work...you get the idea), each will have about 653 calories, 23 grams of fat (four of them saturated), and 791 mg of sodium. That's still not great, but it's much better.

Check the chart on page 11 ("One Cup Entree, One Cup Rice"). It shows what happens to fatty, salty Chinese food when you add enough rice.

Step 2. Say "Steamed Veggies." What makes real Chinese food healthy is not just the rice, but the vegetables. American Chinese focuses on the chicken and meat. So order a portion of steamed veggies and add it to your entree. You'll have more than enough sauce to make it flavorful. And if you're only ordering one dish, at least make it a vegetable-rich one like Chicken Chow Mein or Shrimp with Garlic Sauce.

Step 3. Do the "Forklift." It's how the Chinese eat. Use your fork (or chopsticks) to lift the food out of the sauce and on to your big (if you followed Step 1) bowl of rice. Leave behind the sauce, excess egg and nuts, and anything else you'd rather not eat. Then eat from your rice bowl.

BEHIND THE BAMBOO CURTAIN 

So here are our 15 dishes. We've ranked them from worst (highest percent of calories from fat) to best (lowest percent).

We analyzed them without rice, then added nutrition information for 1 1/3 cups of steamed rice to each (except the House Fried Rice, House Lo Mein, Egg Roll, and Hot and Sour Soup). That's how much rice came with the average take-out order in Washington and Chicago. In San Francisco rice was a la carte.

The percent of calories from fat and grams of fat in each dish are in parentheses following the name.

1. Egg Roll (52%--11g fat). No suprise here. Most of the fat comes from the fried wonton wrapper that surrounds the smidgen of vegetables and pork or shrimp. The one nice thing about an egg roll is that it's not likely to have any cholesterol-laden egg.

Make it Better: Sop up some grease. Roll it in a napkin.

2. Moo Shu Pork (47%--64g fat). (Pork, stir-fried with vegetables and egg and served with thin pancakes.)

There's no reason for Moo Shu to be this fatty. After all, it averages three times more vegetables than pork. So why the 64 grams (15 teaspoons) of fat? And why a higher percent of calories from saturated fat than any other dish? Blame it on the oil in which all those veggies are stir-fried. While you're at it, you can blame all the cholesterol on the eggs--an average of two per order.

Make it Better: Order Moo Shu Vegetable, no egg. Mix it with rice before you wrap it in the pancake.

3. Kung Pao Chicken (42%--76g fat). (Diced chicken, stir-fried with peanuts.)

Nuts. That's the only way to explain how a chicken dish could end up with 76 grams of fat. The average Kung Pao contained almost a quarter-pound (3/4 cup) of peanuts. Two restaurants in Washington dumped on more than a half pound each. That's 118 grams of fat (almost two days' worth), not to mention 1,400 calories. Ugh.

Make it Better: Ask for two or three tablespoons of nuts, max.

4. Sweet and Sour Pork (39%--71g fat). (Batter-dipped pork, deep-fried then stir-fried with pineapple.)

This was the only entree to average less than 1,000 mg of sodium. (Heck. It was the only one under 2,000 mg!) That's probably because it's loaded with sugar. Vegetables were sparse, averaging about a half cup.

Make it Better: Most of the fat's in the breading. So take it off.

5. Beef with Broccoli (35%--46g fat). (Sliced beef, stir-fried with broccoli.)

They averaged more than a half pound of beef (one Chicago restaurant gave us a pound). The dish also was one of the four members of the "3,000 Club" (milligrams of sodium, that is).

Make it Better: Ask for less beef and more broccoli.

6. General Tso's Chicken (33%--59g fat). (Flour-coated chicken, stir-fried.)

Don't expect miracles. The chef's got little more than chicken, oil, and (in some cases) batter to work with. Oh yeah. Salt, too. This dish's 3,000 + milligrams top your 2,400-mg daily limit in one chickeny swoop.

Make it Better: If the chicken is batter-fried, peel it.

7. Orange (Crispy) Beef (33%--66g fat). (Flour-coated beef, stir-fried.)

Expect a lot of meat (three-quarters of a pound, on average) and very few veggies (a half-cup). Only one restaurant (in San Francisco) served as much vegetables as beef. All told, you get more than a day's sodium, a day's fat and cholesterol, and a half-day's sat fat.

Make it Better: If the beef is batter-fried, peel it.

8. Hot and Sour Soup (32%--4g fat). (Pork, tofu, and egg in broth.)

If only you could remove the egg. That's where half your daily cholesterol allowance is. But most restaurants prepare their soups ahead of time. You won't be able to remove the 1,100 mg of sodium per cup, either. Or the MSG that's in soups--and most everything else--on Chinese restaurant menus.

"Unless the menu says that the restaurant doesn't use MSG," explains Barbara Troop, who owns the China Moon Cafe in San Francisco, "you're almost certainly going to get it in your food, no matter what the waiter says." That's because MSG is used in the sauces and stocks that are prepared ahead of time, she says.

Make it Better: You can't.

9. House Lo Mein (31%--36g fat). (Chicken, shrimp, beef, and pork, stir-fried with soft noodles.)

Seventy percent noodles and ten percent vegetables mean low in saturated fat. And most of the meat is chicken. Too bad this was the saltiest dish we found.

Make it Better: Order Vegetable Lo Mein. Mix it with rice.

10. House Fried Rice (30%--50g fat).

You probably don't think cholesterol when you think Fried Rice. But only Moo Shu Pork had more. When we picked apart the food, we saw why: an average of one egg per order.

Make it Better: Never order Fried Rice to go under your entree. If it's your main dish, ask for Vegetable Fried Rice with no egg, and mix it with steamed rice.

11. Chicken Chow Mein (28%--32g fat). (Chicken with Chinese vegetables.)

Fifty-five percent veggies and 30 percent chicken. That's our kind of dish...as long as you stay away from the fried noodles we were served in Washington and Chicago. (We didn't include them in our analyses. Ditto for the lo mein noodles we were served in San Francisco.)

Make it Better: Ax the fried noodles.

12. Hunan Tofu (27%--28g fat). (Tofu, stir-fried in hot sauce.)

The sauce only accounts for about a third of the dish's fat. The rest comes from its pound of tofu. Veggies? Pretty scarce. At least it has no cholesterol and not too much sat fat.

13. Shrimp with Garlic Sauce (25%--27g fat). (Shrimp, stir-fried with vegetables.)

Only four percent of calories from saturated fat (wow!), but more than a day's worth of cholesterol in each order (oof!). Most restaurants gave us six ounces of shrimp, though one in Chicago piled on almost a pound. That would sock you with close to 900 mg of cholesterol--three day's worth.

Make it Better: Try scallops instead.

14. Stir-Fried Vegetables (22%--19g fat).

Vegetables and sauce. You won't get much lower in saturated fat. And you sure can't beat zero cholesterol. You're not likely to do better than its 2,150 mg of sodium, either.

Make it Better: Try them steamed (or braised in broth). Sprinkle lightly with soy sauce. But go easy; every teaspoon costs you 350 mg of sodium.

15. Szechuan Shrimp (18%--19g fat). (Shrimp, stir-fried in hot sauce.)

Except for the day's worth of cholesterol, this was the best entree. It was lowest in saturated fat, tied for lowest in fat, and close to lowest in calories.

That's if you get it without peanuts. Most of the restaurants served it that way, but one in Chicago piled on almost a half pound. (We didn't include any nuts in our analysis.) Also, three San Francisco restaurants breaded and deep-fried the shrimp. (We didn't analyze those, either.)

Make it Better: Make sure it's nut-less and not breaded and-deep fried. Try scallops instead.