Restaurant calories

bettycooker

How do I check calories for restaurants?

DresdenSinn

The MFP food database has a pretty extensive list of restaurant foods. You can also google the particular restaurant for it's menu's nutritional facts but may have mixed success.

rileysowner

Go to the restaurant's website, ask while there, or in the case of small independent ones, pick something you think is close, or guess.

SusanMFindlay

I find that Googling the restaurant's name followed by "nutrition" will bring up the nutritional information for their food if it's available. In North America, chains with over 20 locations have to provide that information.

For restaurants that aren't part of chains, your best bet is to find a comparable item at a chain and log that instead. If you can't do that, use the recipe builder, but it's usually advised to add an extra 1-2 tbsp oil or butter to the listing (unless you're *absolutely sure* of the recipe) to account for the fact that restaurant food tends to have a lot of hidden fat - extra basting with butter, cooking with more oil than you'd ever imagine, etc. You might also want to add an extra 1 tsp salt if you care about tracking sodium intake.

bettycooker

Thanks for the response!