Should You Believe the Calorie Counts on Restaurant Menus? Are You Even Noticing Them?

You want to know exactly how many calories are in the meal you’re about to eat?  Here’s how to get an exact answer:  Grab your plate, hop into your car, and speed over to the nearest lab that has a bomb calorimeter. A scientist will put your meal into a machine containing a water jacket, burn the food, and measure the increase in water temperature, which indicates how much heat the food produced. When that figure is converted into calories, you’ll have it—the exact number of calories you would have eaten if your meal hadn’t been incinerated. 

What’s the point?  Outside the lab, calorie counts--whether on a paper bag of McDonald’s fries, packaged cookies, or any other edible--are an ESTIMATE.  Even at Wendy’s no one is counting the exact number and size of fries in your bag.  Still, you may be surprised by just how inaccurate these restaurant estimates can be. By the end of 2012, you should find calorie info at all the large restaurant chains, that is, if the date on which this information becomes required (by the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010) is finally set in stone. Meanwhile, you can check the calorie counts of many chain restaurants online, but don’t expect these to be exact either. 

On to the first calorie-related news story: Tufts University researchers compared 42 restaurants’ calorie figures with their own lab results on 269 foods. The conclusions were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in late July, 2011, and the story has been picked up by many major news media.  Here are some facts the study reported:

-Almost 20% of foods tested contained at least 100 more calories than the menu indicated. Some foods were a lot higher.

-Only 7% of the foods tested were within 10 calories of the restaurant figure.

-The biggest discrepancies were in regular restaurants (not fast-food chains). This isn’t surprising since, in fast-food restaurants, there’s more control over food preparation and portion size. 

-Sometimes discrepancies varied from one test to another.  Example: Chipotle Mexican Grill’s burrito bowl (listed on the menu at 454 calories) was, according to the lab, 703 one time and 567 another.

Do a few hundred calories for one meal eaten out really matter?  Consider these facts: 1) Food purchased away from home now accounts for about one-third of the average American’s daily food consumption. 2) About 1/3 of American adults are obese, and another 34% are overweight. 3) An extra 100 calories a day for a year turns into 10-15 extra pounds, says Jean Mayer, a scientist at Tufts University.  Therefore, dieters may want to know that the cranberry pecan chicken salad at Bob Evans, listed at 841 calories, actually contained more than 1,100 calories, about half the number of calories the average person should consume in one day.

Are restaurants deliberately lying about calorie counts? More likely the errors are just due to the nature of food to vary from one sample to another.  Food scientist Karin Allen points out that the calorie counts on two apples of exactly of the same size and from the same tree would not be exactly the same.

Whether calorie counts on menus are accurate or not, the next questions to consider are these: Is anyone even reading them? Is anyone revising food choices because of them?  In July of 2011, The British Medical Journal reported on a 2009 study of fast-food restaurants in New York City after the city’s calorie-labeling laws went into effect. Consumer Reports on Health summarized the results in its November 2011 issue. USA Today also covered about this study.  Here’s what the study concluded:

-Of more than 8,000 people surveyed, about 15% said they were influenced by the calorie counts.

-On average, this group purchased food with 106 fewer calories than those who didn’t consult or consider the information. 

Another study--of NYC customers eating in Starbucks in 2010--revealed that customers ordered 6% fewer calories after the calorie-count law went into effect. Another 2010  study showed that parents used calorie info to make more healthful choices for their kids but not for themselves!  

The above evidence suggests some benefits but not impressive results from posted calorie counts.  What might be more helpful? Restaurants could offer more low-calorie items. (McDonalds, for example, has cut down on the French fries in its Happy Meal and added sliced apples.) Restaurants could also prepare their higher-calorie items in ways that cut the calories somewhat.  Some are doing just that rather than admit to serving a 1000-calorie piece of pie.

Perhaps the public’s response to calorie-count statistics will be more healthful once all chain restaurants with more than 20 locations are required by federal law to list calorie counts on all their regular items, probably some time in 2012. Delays have occurred because, at first, restaurants complained that they needed more time to comply with the law.  Then, there were disputes about whom the law should apply to, and some of these are ongoing.  Do movie theatre snack counters need to comply?  (No.) What about deli counters making sandwiches in grocery stores or bars, convenience stores in gas stations, and restaurants selling liquor? (We’ll see.)

Until you can find calorie counts in all the chain restaurants, you can access the calorie counts of many chains online by just googling “calorie counts on menus.” Here are a few links to sites you could check out, ideally BEFORE you go to a chain restaurant:

http//www.foodfacts.info/

http://caloriecount.about.com/restaurants-mc1

http://www.dietfacts.com/fastfood.asp

If you want to check out calorie counts on specific foods, here’s a great site: http://www.myfoodapedia.gov/Default.aspx  I typed in “cake” and got a lot of very specific choices, for example, “carrot cake with icing, one layer” and “carrot cake with icing, two layers.”  Of course, I wasn’t happy with the answers: one layer 326, two layers, 543. 

Conclusion: This is the Information Age. The stats are out there. You can’t say that your diet failed because you couldn’t find out whether a hot fudge sundae had a lot of calories or not. 

This link http://shelflifeadvice.com/content/counting-calories-curtailing-salt-so-are-restaurant-chains  will get you to another article dealing with restaurant calorie counts. l

Source(s):

latimes.com “Restaurant calorie counts not always accurate”
http://mobiletest.latimes.com/p.pa=rp&m=b&postId=577070&curAbsIndex=3&resultsUrl=DID%3D1%26DFCL%3D1000%26DSB%3Drank%2523desc%26DBFQ%3DuserId%253A7%26DL.w%3D%26DL.d%3D10%26DQ%3DsectionId%253A6926%26DPS%3D0%26DPL%3D10

usatoday.com “Fast-food calorie counts in menus prompt cuts”
http://yourlife.usatoday.com/fitness-food/diet-nutrition/story/2011/07/Fast-food-calorie-counts-on-menus-prompt-cuts/49678316/1 

nytimes.com “Calorie Data to Be Posted at Most Chains”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/business/24menu.html

nydailynews.com “Obama proposes new batch of calorie count laws for menus”
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-04-04/entertainment/29401975_1_calorie-menus-restaurant-industry

foodsafetynews.com “Calorie Cover-up on Chain Restaurant Menus”
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/06/calorie-cover-up/

cdc.gov “Overweight and Obesity, Data and Statistics”
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/index.html