What to do about local restaurants???

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brandicockrum
brandicockrum Posts: 121 Member
in Food and Nutrition
We went to a local restaurant tonight, and I had my favorite. I'm sure not the healthiest item on the menu, but definitely not the worst. I didn't eat all of it either. Problem is, this place is a local establishment, so they don't have a nutrition fact guide for their foods. Typically with local places I will find something similar online, but no such luck with this one. Any advice on what to input for those types of things? I guess I could just skip the dinner diary for the day, since this meal was kind of a cheat for me, but I dunno.

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  • helloiloveukitty
    helloiloveukitty Posts: 448 Member
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    I just try to guess with searching in the food data base...I mean if you can't know exactly I think its the next best thing and I always over estimate. Honestly this really dissuades me from eating at local places like that, to me it = unchecked calories even if my guestimating come close it bugs me

    if you fee like you did good and it is a cheat me I'm sure you won't be arrested if you don't log it ;)
  • jlsimmo
    jlsimmo Posts: 1 Member
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    You probably won't find an exact match... but this site is very useful for the larger chains, maybe you could find an equivalent dish.

    http://www.dwlz.com/

    Good luck!
  • beMOEfit
    beMOEfit Posts: 10 Member
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    I ate at a local place last night. It was a bbq joint, so I just compared it to Famous Dave's. I am sure it isn't the most accurate, but at least it give you something. I also noticed for some things I just had to find homemade or random selections. Maybe break your meal up into the easiest, most similar selections and do it that way.
  • UneJolieFemme
    UneJolieFemme Posts: 86 Member
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    I guess you could add the main ingredients, but chances are the cook used some that are hard to guess/estimate like butter, olive oil, salt, etc. so instead of entering pretty much any number, I think I would skip it.
  • jessieinblue
    jessieinblue Posts: 287 Member
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    I disagree with a previous poster about avoiding local restaurants. You might not be able to get an exact calorie count (or as exact as possible) but supporting local places is so much better than feeding your money to the big chains, and their ingredients are almost certainly more local, fresher and tastier.

    That being said, I usually input each separate ingredient in my dish, giving my best guess to sizes, overestimating a bit. I then add at least a little sodium (depending on how salty it tasted -- I keep my sodium very low, so I can tell if something is super salty). You also need to take into account whatever the food was cooked in and add some oil and/or butter.

    Good luck :)

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