Does Orange Chicken include rice?

misterred23

Not sure if this is the right place to ask (Technical support was the only category available, and it's required) , but here goes...

There's this local Chinese place my wife and I like. I usually get the orange chicken meal. It's a massive plate of orange chicken and some rice with bits of chicken in it (not orange chicken, just plain). It's a ton of food, and I usually eat it over the course of a few days/meals.

The problem is, this local restaurant doesn't include nutritional information on the menu. I have no idea what the calories/macros are. I usually just enter a general "Orange Chicken" entry into the app, but I'd like to be more accurate, if I can. I just don't know if there entries when you search for "orange chicken" include the rice? I would assume they don't.

Does anyone have any advice/tips for how to log this food correctly? I don't exactly want to drag a food scale to the restaurant with me and find out what exactly counts a "8 oz". What would you guys do in this situation?

(I know the short answer is "you're overthinking it", but I'm hoping for a little more help than that, if possible).

AnnPT77

The MFP database is crowd-sourced, so the "orange chicken" calories include rice if the person who entered the "orange chicken" included rice and knew the right calories for the whole thing. However, if the person didn't have rice, it wouldn't include rice.

When logging a restaurant meal, about the best you can do is scan the various examples in the database that are the same dish, and pick one on the higher side, to err on the side of caution.

If you know of a chain restaurant (that has nutrition info) that has a similar dish, sometimes you can look at the chain's web site and figure out whether their version of the dish does/doesn't include the rice, and get an idea what the calories might be in either case, and go from there.

Another option is to mentally deconstruct the dish into component parts, and log those. (If the chicken is breaded, log X amount of breaded fried chicken, Y amount of orange sauce, Z amount of extra fat/oil (because there's usually lots in a restaurant meal), and some rice.

If you eat out very frequently, this general situation could maybe present problems to your logging accuracy. If it's a rare meal out that you can estimate, I'd suggest trying to err on the higher side, then just go on with life.

I've been logging for 8 years, and eating out occasionally (up to a maybe 3-4 meals a week) hasn't been a problem. Some meals are easier to get close than others, of course.

ninerbuff

Orange chicken is high in calories. It's breaded and fried. Then add rice on top of that? If you just ate about 6oz of orange chicken and a cup of rice, you'll EASILY be over 500-600 calories if not more.


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