Restaurants that Don't Post their Nutrition Info

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  • ivyjbres
    ivyjbres Posts: 612 Member
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    From working in food service for almost half of my life, I can tell you its a better idea to make healthy choices based on common knowledge than to rely on posted nutrition info. The nutritional info is based on 1 perfectly prepared dish, with no substitutions or alterations. And most of the time, that's not what you're getting. Suppliers will change or substitute products in a restaurant's order all the time, and we just have to find a way to make it work and taste right. We can't actually guarantee that it will be anywhere near the posted into.
  • wsheaf82
    wsheaf82 Posts: 248 Member
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    A very long time ago, I used to work in a restaurant cooking for upwards of 500 to 1000 people a day. I'd say the "reason" is laziness.

    I can cook a meal, measure all my ingredients, and get a calorie calculator to tell me what's in it. BUT for it to be the same calories every time I make it, I have to stick to those measurements.

    In the restaurant, when we cooked, we didn't measure quantities of oil we cooked with. We eyeballed ingredients and just poured oil. It was too fast paced to do anything but. (Or so we told ourselves.) When something started to burn in a pan, more oil was added. To make lettuce look fresher for longer, it was spritzed or tossed with oil. Pasta was coated in it after being drained so that the noodles wouldn't stick together. You get the idea. There really was no way to PROVE that every time someone was eating something that it had the same ingredients and caloric value.

    It was a 'mom and pop' shop - very hit or miss on the exact nature of these recipes. Man I am so glad I don't work there anymore.
    From working in food service for almost half of my life, I can tell you its a better idea to make healthy choices based on common knowledge than to rely on posted nutrition info. The nutritional info is based on 1 perfectly prepared dish, with no substitutions or alterations. And most of the time, that's not what you're getting. Suppliers will change or substitute products in a restaurant's order all the time, and we just have to find a way to make it work and taste right. We can't actually guarantee that it will be anywhere near the posted into.

    Both of these are unfortunately correct. I worked at a chain restaurant about 7 years ago. I worked for that food chain at 4 different locations for 6 years. Everyone that I worked at never measured out ingredients that were not already prepped before hand. Even though there was specific instructions on how each meal was supposed to be prepared. The fast past cooking during dinner rush and lunch rush just made it unfathomable to measure the correct amount of every non-premeasured ingredient in every meal. And it would get worse if the size of the rush coming was misjudged and you run out of the prepped food or ingredients.

    So yes, eating out is really bad for a diet even if the nutritional facts are given.
  • DaniJeanine
    DaniJeanine Posts: 473 Member
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    Check out the Eat This Not That series of books. They give you the best possible options for chain and non-chain restaurants. Here's a link to their online "Menu Decoder" that gives you the inside info about the non-chain items...

    http://eatthis.menshealth.com/menu-decoder/

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