I need help figuring out calories!!

hazelbutton
hazelbutton Posts: 5
edited September 22 in Food and Nutrition
I started on myfitnesspal.com so I would be more aware of the calories I was taking in each day. Even though I didn't know exactly how many calories was in a specific food I ate, I looked it up in the food database and went with whatever it told me. Last week when I looked up shrimp lo mein (general, no specific brand), it told me it was 500 calories for 1/2 cup. Once I weighed the lo mein on my food scale, I realized it was a bad dinner choice and told myself it was a learning experience.

Today, my mom wants to get chinese food for dinner. When I told her about the shrimp lo mein, she was surprised and wanted me to look up the calorie content for all the food she was planning on getting tonight. When I looked up shrimp lo mein on fatsecret.com, it told me 1 cup was 252 calories, a huge difference from myfitnesspal.com

So, who is right? If there was only 100 calrories difference, I wouldn't be as concerned.

Replies

  • laddyboy
    laddyboy Posts: 1,565 Member
    It depends on the recipes used. They could both be right. You should stay away from takeout anyway.
  • millesun
    millesun Posts: 209 Member
    They could both be right depending on where you get it....If in dought I look at CalorieKing and here and kinda find a middle between the two.
  • SazzieBunny
    SazzieBunny Posts: 20
    you'd need to ask the restarunt that because it depends on soooo many things!! like what oil they cook it in and everything....the only people who can give you calorie count are the people making the food...
    and chinese is generally always high calories :P well in my experience anyway,cause its my weakness :P
  • TashaS
    TashaS Posts: 199 Member
    Do you know what restaurant your Mom plans on ordering the food from? If so I'd try to look up their menu, most restaurants list the nutritional information online now (might be harder with Chinese food). Both MFP and the other website could be right - like laddyboy said it totally depends on the recipe used, the portion size too (ie. how many servings out of 1 recipe) - the more 'servings' a recipe makes the lower the calorie count per serving.
  • kerrikdavis
    kerrikdavis Posts: 6 Member
    Shrimp Lo Mein from a restaurant is probably closer to the 500 calories per half cup. When ordering Chinese, I usually get steamed chicken or shrimp with steamed vegetables and ask for the sauce on the side from the healthy menu. Get plain rice instead of fried.

    Hope that helps!

    Kerri
  • jhandley
    jhandley Posts: 118
    you can also try dottie's weightloss zone.

    http://www.dwlz.com/restaurants.html
  • carbonboy
    carbonboy Posts: 729
    Yes, it definitely depends on the recipe used, but 500 calories for 1/2 cup of ANYTHING sounds high to me. Premium ice cream isn't even that high in calories. You have to remember that a lot of the calorie info on myfitnesspal comes from user input, and I've found many of them to be wildly inaccurate. And non-chain restaurant food is the hardest to know about because you have no way of knowing what they're putting in there. Just estimate the best you can when looking at the meal components.
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