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Just because you love the food at Grace Su’s China Gorge doesn’t mean you have to abandon the menu entirely if you decide to pursue a better body weight.
Just ask Theresa Draper of Parkdale, Ore., a small farm town about 20 miles south of Hood River, which is itself an hour east of foodie Mecca, Portland.

Bins of bounty at Draper Girls Country Farm near Parkdale, Ore.Draper runs the orchard at the family’s Draper Girls Country Farm. But at the end of the day, when she’s done selling gorgeous pears and apples and more, she loves Chinese food. Orange chicken. Sweet and sour shrimp.“I love her stuff,” Draper says. “I can’t eat anywhere else, that place is so good to me. The food is so fresh.”So she had a moment’s pause when her niece invited her to attend a Weight Watchers group in The Dalles. Weight Watchers assigns point values to different foods.

More points is bad.

Fewer is better.

Draper gets 26 points per day, to spread across 24 hours.

“It depends on the person’s weight, how many points you get,” she says. “I have the lowest points you can have.”

She thought that might nix Chinese food for her. After all, several items similar to items found on the menu at Grace Su’s China Gorge carry hefty point values.

General Tso’s chicken? 17 points.

Orange-ginger beef? 15 points.

But when Draper scanned the menu, compared it to information in her “Weights Watchers Points Plus Dining Out Companion,” she found good news. Broccoli beef steps lightly on the Weight Watchers scale — at just 4 points.“I was so happy to find that because you don’t go over your points,” she says.

She says chicken costs fewer points than beef, so she goes for the Broccoli chicken. In addition to the main ingredients, it contains garlic, rice wine, light soy sauce and carrots, says Grace Su.“It was really really good, too,” Draper says.

“For me, I feel like it’s a really good, light dish.”