There is one joke in "Animal House" that everybody laughs at, but I don't.

It's the motto of Faber College, which is revealed to be "Knowledge is Good." I never saw why that is funny. I agree with the founder of the school, the fictional Emil Faber. Knowledge is good.

Maybe it would sound better if it were expressed in Latin: Scientia bona est.

The more you know, the better equipped you are to navigate and understand life. But it is possible, just possible, that this sentiment has its limits.

I am speaking here about putting calorie information on menus.

Most fast food and large chain restaurants are required by law to say exactly how many calories are in their Fried McWhopper Chili-Chicken Burger. And that takes all the fun out of eating out.

It's not so much a problem at a fast food joint. You don't go to the Burger Chef looking for healthy foods. You don't stop into the Red Barn hoping to slim down. You don't pop into a Chi-Chi's to improve your sense of wellness.

By their very nature, fast food joints are going to be bad for you. They promise food that is fast, cheap and highly flavored, which is to say loaded with calories. That's their whole premise, their entire reason for existence.

The calories on their menus are about what you would expect them to be, only doubled.

But it can be disconcerting, if not outright depressing, to see calories listed at a fancier chain restaurant.

My wife recently dragged me into a national chain restaurant found primarily in malls. I hadn't been to one of them in perhaps 20 years, ever since a friend had a birthday party at one.

The menu is famously extensive, and the food, I will happily admit, was quite good.

But the calorie listings gave me pause. Even though we were on vacation, a time when it has been scientifically proven that calories don't count, I found myself making decisions based on the numbers.

A spicy crispy chicken sandwich with Buffalo sauce tempted me, but it comes in at 1,090 calories, and that's before you add the fries (1,060 for a full portion; the portion they give you with a sandwich could be smaller). The restaurant does offer a side order of salad (130 calories) instead of the fries, but come on. Some things simply require fries, and a spicy fried chicken sandwich is one of them.

I thought about the shrimp scampi, but that was 1,260 calories. I contemplated the shrimp and chicken gumbo, but that was 1,450 calories.

By this point, I started doing what everybody does: I scanned the menu for the most calorific item they offer. It's a weekend brunch dish, bruléed french toast with chicken sausage, at 2,370 calories, barely beating out another brunch offering, cinnamon roll pancakes, at 2,360.

I have to admit, cinnamon roll pancakes sound amazing.

But the problem with a menu such as this is it leads to calorie creep. Once you see spaghetti and meatballs at 1,920 calories and fish and chips at 1,930 calories, suddenly chicken Madeira at an even 1,300 calories sounds … reasonable.

I ended up ordering a Peruvian chicken bowl, which clocks in at 1,200. It was excellent, and I felt almost like I was getting a deal, calorie-wise.

On the face of it, the Peruvian chicken bowl sounds healthy. It consists of charbroiled chicken with black beans, plantains and salsa, served with white rice. The plantain pieces were fried, true, but there were not so many of them.

Admittedly, the portions are enormous, which is part of this particular chain's appeal. But that isn't as much a cause of the calorie inflation as the fact that it is a restaurant.

Restaurants want their food to stand out from the meals you might make at home. The way they do that is to make it taste better, and the way they do that is to load it down with as much fat and sugar as they can.

In the essay that made him famous, chef Anthony Bourdain revealed that diners at a top-level restaurant can expect to consume an entire stick of butter over the course of a meal. That's enough to make a sardine sandwich taste like cinnamon roll pancakes.

When I go out for a good meal, I want to be able to relax and enjoy myself. I don't want to have to think about calories, especially the number of calories you're likely to consume at a good meal. I even want to be able to trick myself into thinking that a Peruvian chicken bowl does not contain half the calories I should eat in an entire day.

Sometimes, a little knowledge is a bad thing.

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