Food Facts Restaurants Hide From You

[saracidaltendencies]

Found some of these quite shocking!

Restaurant Food Facts

More Secrets

[cdjack]

And people wonder why I don't like to eat out.
This is why I like to cook: I know exactly what I am eating.

[Jan in CA]

I never eat at any of those anyway, but the information should be available to people like me who want to know what they are eating!

[Ivy19]

I just bought the Eat This, Not That book for my husband. It's pretty amazing; some fast foods you'd think are a more healthy choice simply are not. Example: you're better off ordering a Quarter Pounder, no cheese, from MacDonalds than the Premium Grilled Chicken Club (410 cal. vs. 570 and the chicken sandwich has nearly 1,000 more mg. of sodium).

Another eye opener for me: the whipped cream on my morning mocha from Starbucks adds 70 calories and 7 grams of fat to the drink. Yikes!

[ecb]

yeah, this stuff can get crazy
when my kids start to get diet/food crazy, I have them sign up for fitday.com and as long as they are HONEST about what they list and eat, its a great learning tool.
when my eldest started skipping breakfast because she was "eating to much" I did not freak out (outwardly) I told her that was fine as long as she was 'responsible' about it. She started keeping tight track of her intake, and plugging it into fitday and in a week and a half she was freaking out because she was not getting enough folate and Protein in her diet. Rearainged her daily food intake, and she did not skip meals again for a while.
but it was a good learning tool for her.

ecb

[Mike]

The real secrets the restaurants don't want to tell you is what the underpaid employees are doing to your food. That's the reason to avoid restaurants.
If you're counting calories why would you even go anywhere but a salad bar anyway? Then you are free to complain about the sodium product sprayed on the lettuce to keep it from wilting while sitting out all day.

Food fact the medical and science associations don't want you to know.
For years THEY were the ones telling us to eat trans fat and avoid the real fats by saying margarine good, butter bad. Now that they've decided to reverse their claims everyone is instantly supposed to change their recipes or invent new ones or be taken to court???

I don't worry too much about calories (which seems to be what most of the complaints are about). I'll eat a whole cheesecake to myself about one a week over the winter. I change to shoe-fly pie (that's like solid sugar topped with fat) in the summer, about 2 a week.

I can handle putting on more weight and I really wish dieters would stop trying to rule my life because they can't control theirs.
Do you really need to know the calorie count of a double hot fudge sundae or a piece of cheesecake to know it doesn't fit with your diet? It's not like it's rocket science, you're on a diet, have a small portion of meat/fish and load up on uncooked or steamed vegetables. If the restaurant gives you a 1lb steak cut it up into 4 pieces and take the other 3 home for meals the rest of the week.

I don't eat restaurant food often but when I do I want a real portion. Telling me that I have to order 3 main courses and 4 deserts is not going to help you lose weight.
Put down the spoon and back away from the icecream bar.

[saracidaltendencies]

I agree with you, however, I think the main point in that article isn't so much about the calories, it's the unwillingness of these chains to make available the nutritional information and the fact they try to lead people to believe they have healthier food options when in fact, they aren't healthy at all.

Of course the safest option is to not eat out at all, but, that's just not a reality. At some point most everyone is going to eat out and, these companies horribly mislead people by claiming they have healthy options when often the options that seem the least healthy are actually better.

[Mike]

This present push for restaurants to go healthy or get sued really annoys me. It takes me back to when I was 6' and 120lbs and would always get asked if I wanted diet soda.
Do I look like I need a diet anything?
Then they came along and took away my super sized fries.

I just went back and read the part on Red Robin. I wish we had one of those. My 3500 calorie burger sounded good.

[annomalley]

I agree with you, however, I think the main point in that article isn't so much about the calories, it's the unwillingness of these chains to make available the nutritional information and the fact they try to lead people to believe they have healthier food options when in fact, they aren't healthy at all.

This is the part I don't understand: I get that the restaurants are unwilling to share nutritional data because if the public knew how much fat and calories were in these dishes, they'd stop eating them. I get that because of this, restaurants are afraid of losing business.

But if your restaurant is losing business because you sell a product that the public doesn't want, then why not start selling something they do want????