Chipotle is Giving Us Too Much Food

I don't know if this is relevant, but I hear ya on portion sizes varying! Honestly, the employees SHOULD just stick to what their company/trainers taught them to put into each meal. There are guidelines for a reason.

I work at a chinese restaurant in a mall near my house, and I am always irritated by these loud, fatass customers who yell at me to add extra of everything when I'm putting their bowls together, even though the regular portions are QUITE large already, /and/ they are not paying any extra for that extra sesame chicken, ect.

so, it's actually greedy customers that get portions doubled up past what they should be, past what you are supposed to be paying for/and logging in as calories.

Well, that was rude.

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Guys,

The reason the OP is getting so much slack I suspect is because of the confirmations of the Chipotle worker later in the thread. As the employee points out, a SERVING per Chipotle (read as "the numbers we use to calculate our website-posted nutritional info") is calculated in oz. and translated to spoonfuls/spoon sizes.

The problem lies in this original statement from the topic poster: "The nutrition facts on a burrito bowl include one spoonful of any item that you add to the nutrition calculator." However, according to the employee this is blatantly INCORRECT. And in fact, we can immediately realize this. It is fairly straight forward that the bulk of the calorie content in a sour cream-free bowl is going to be the rice. A 1/2c (which is just a touch over the 3.5oz spoonful at 4oz.) of cooked brown is 200 cal. This is true of Chipotle brown rice or Minute rice @ home. So you're taking in 350 cal in rice with the 2 spoonfuls (and I don't think I've ever seen a Chipotle employee give 3). We also are given the 4 oz. portion of steak at 190. That bowl comes to only 540 + toppings.... so you can see that even with what the OP is calling "aggressive" portioning, the total calories are not at all getting out of control as he may have you believe.

Note that I've rarely seen a Chipotle go egregiously over these numbers... maybe an extra oz/oz and a half or so of steak (basically giving you a half spoonful instead of 1/7, because seriously who can precisely pull 1/7 of a spoonful), or an high-topped spoon of rice. So, really, misinformation is being spread here. That doesn't excuse the "I don't care give me more wtf is your problem?" type of posts, but it does give a case as to why you need to be sure of what you're reading.

At the end of the day -- here is what matters:

1) You're already taking the big step of tracking/managing your weight, fitness, and health. This is huge and honestly 95% of the battle. If you are mindful and get into the routine, eventually the size variance of to-go/eating out food isn't going to matter to your success.

2) Let's not forget that if you're being health-conscious, you're probably not getting sour cream/excessive guac/etc on your burrito. So everything in the darn thing is actually quite healthy. Solid grains/lower GI carbs from brown rice, great fiber from your bean choice, an utterly STELLAR protein:fat ratio for any food, let alone fast food (roughly 5:2, which beats even an aggressive Macro balance of 50C:25F:25P), and a few USDA servings of veggies depending on your preferences.

3) Given the reality of the situation and how corporations work, chances are very high that your 500 calorie burrito bowl is not suddenly becoming a 900 calorie one.

Burrito on!

I was clearly venting about the RUDE, loud, nasty ones,
not some polite person like yourself kindly asking for a little extra.

I'll be sweet as sugar and say, politely, "Sorry sir, it will be a few dollars extra, is that okay?"
and these people I'm talking about will EXPLODE into angry, swearing rage and tell me it's unfair,
as if /I/ make the rules.

also, I treat every customer very kindly even though I am not permitted to take tips, though I have been offered many tips before, which speaks of what a polite server I am.

rude, loud, fatass, nasty ... anymore adjectives you'd like to add to that ever growing list?


Seriously, you're a gem. (that was actually sarcasm) ... Pretty much what I'm seeing is that you are a bit self absorbed, and totally loud, rude and nasty. But hey, congrats on not being a "fatass"!

I don't see why you are giving this lady a hard time. I'm overweight, and I can perfectly picture the fatass, rude customers she is describing. Maybe you have never met one...you would know it if you did, and you would think the same, whether you were overweight or not.

Guys,
The reason the OP is getting so much slack I suspect is because of the confirmations of the Chipotle worker later in the thread.

I guess the first four pages of jabs were the warm-up. :laugh:

TLDR....

Only got thru first 3 pages so far but had to post. It is one of my favorite dishes when travelling for work. I do not know what you people are talking about. I have no issues eating a whole chicken burrito bowl and could probably eat two and still want to lick the bowls out.

The discrepancy doesn't worry me. It all balances out in the end. In fact I pretty much count on some restaurants being off. It could be either direction. Either I will lose or I won't. I have found though, as long as I track everything I eat to the best of my ability, I lose weight.

The only Chipotle in our area literally JUST opened up, so I've yet to sample it.

But here we have PANCHERO'S (which I gather is basically the same thing, different brand).

And it's AWESOME!

Adds nothing to the thread, but I hadn't seen anyone mention them yet, and wanted to be sure they got their props before we hit 500

The reason the OP is getting so much slack I suspect is because of the confirmations of the Chipotle worker later in the thread. As the employee points out, a SERVING per Chipotle (read as "the numbers we use to calculate our website-posted nutritional info") is calculated in oz. and translated to spoonfuls/spoon sizes.

Read what the OP said:

I just contacted Chipotle to verify how many servings of each item are supposed to go into a burrito bowl

So the OP isn't giving made up information since this is the info he was given by the company. The fact that a supposed employee challenges this later on is irrelevent to why everyone is being so rude to the OP. This is the General DIET and Weight LOSS Help forum. The OP gave the information in an attempt to help others. The people being ****s about it are just showing what horrible and nasty creatures they are and there is no excuse for it.

No offense, but I'm going to trust a ground level employee who gave specific oz. sizing data for utensils over a vague commentary from a corporate phone shill in a 1:1 he said-she said.

Not to mention if you read my math you'd see how 1 spoonful of all of the items wouldn't nearly make up the nutritional data provided by Chipotle. You can do the math for yourself from all their ingredients and immediately realize that your numbers would end up far too low. Just quickly, a 1-spoon of everything steak burrito with cheese, pico, and corn salsas (no SC/guac) would be only ~425 calories!! Fact checking 101.

I'll take you seriously and just say that I typically assume that restaurants are a bit underestimated; but if it wasn't a typo when you said that Chipotle ends up being 70 calories over their estimate, that's not so bad. I was traveling for more than a week recently, and I just stayed under my goal by about 200 calories each day to account for the likely underestimation.

I read that places like Chipotle can be about 10% off since employees have more discretion than somewhere like McDonald's where a burger is a burger. (And sit-down restaurants can be even more off since the cook will do their own thing.)

But this doesn't mean I avoid such places entirely. I do eat out much less than I used to, but I consider Chipotle a decent option. I haven't seen employees give extra scoops, so that hasn't been a problem. And in my burrito bowl--which probably ends up being more like a salad--I do NO rice, light on the black beans and at least double fajita veggies (along with barbacoa meat, lettuce, salsa and guac). I'm lucky that I don't even like cheese or sour cream.

I work at Chipotle.

We're supposed to give out 7 ounces of rice, 4 ounces of meat, and 3.5 ounces each of the additional items. If you want your bowl to be "correct" tell them to measure out 4 ounces of rice, etc. A spoonful is 3.5 ounces...so when we scoop those extra bits of meat the second time, you're not getting double, we're just making it 4 ounces. The plastic side cups are 4 ounces, just for a visual. When I first started, I would just scoop all the meat into a side cup, and then dump it on the bowl.

Trust me, corporate has this down to a science. At my store we actually pulled out the food scale, just to confirm.

This is actually pretty interesting.

Their web nutrition analyzer is for 4 oz. of rice.
Corporate told OP the serving is 4 oz. of rice.
But the employee says they're supposed to give out 7 oz. of rice.

So if all of that is correct, Chipotle's posted NI is incorrect and Chipotle knows it. (And pretty predictably they're 'padding' the dish with cheap rice, not meat or cheese or guac.)

I never liked Chipotle founder Steve Ells, ever since that reality show he was on and the controversy that followed. I'm going to Qdoba from here out.

I don't see that as Corporate "knowingly" creating an issue. In no universe are they required to give you 1 serving exactly as stated on their website of every ingredient. So their NI isn't incorrect at all. It's no different than things you buy at the grocery store -- they all give information for 1 serving.... it's up to you to only eat 1.

Now, you could say it's unfortunate that they list per-serving instead of total for readability, but I would much rather have it per serving and do my own math when I found out the "what we're supposed to give out" numbers. I'd point out that someone on MFP has done that in the DB, because as I pointed out a couple posts ago, if you actually calculated a burrito bowl based on 1 serving of everything, it would actually be much lower than what is in our DB for at least some of the topping combinations... so it looks like MFP has some smart/dedicated users!

when i go to chipotle (and btw, i LOVE chipotle!), i eat about a third of my bowl if i eat there. i bring the rest home and break it into 2 more servings OR i bring the entire thing home, weigh it and break it into 3 even servings. it works great as this way i still get my veggie bowl with my beloved guacamole, and by eating less it fits my calorie requirements. btw, i usually eat every 2 1/2 hours, but after chipotle i get hungry 3 1/2 to 4 hours later. it hasn't slowed my weight loss at all, so it does seem to work out well for me.

Really?????????

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I find it incredibly funny that when someone logs on here and says they are having problems losing weight, the very first response (and the 80 pile-on posts behind that) is "You're eating too much" and "you're not being accurate" and "you are underestimating.".

Yet when somebody comes on and tries to give info about how a popular chain can be calorically inaccurate, they're told to man up and stop whining.

I also love how respondents on this site will talk about calories as if they were some precise measurement ..." adjust by 100 calories"..." you need to up your calories by 250..." etc.

It's all very entertaining.

I'm sorry, did you say something. I thought you did but with no face it just sounds like mumbling. Sorry there faceless warrior.

:laugh: +1

You could say this about pretty much any restaurant in the entire world...really...do you think it's just Chipotle employees who "overestimate" their servings? They're a bunch of kids working for minimum wage at a restaurant...not sure what it to be expected here. I would think that one would understand that even if amounts are posted on a website, when it comes to eating out, it's really a crap shoot as to what you're getting...I pretty much chalk any meal out to around 1000 calories or so.

This is not common sense for a lot of people. Many people, particularly if new to counting, will take nutritional info on an official website or in-store chart as fact.

Too often people run up in these threads, guns blazing, and forget that this isn't MFP-Advanced. This place is swarming with people who don't consider things that us experienced dieters (sorry, lifestylers for all the extra sensitive) take for granted.

Several people have already posted in this thread alone saying "thanks for the heads up".

You could say this about pretty much any restaurant in the entire world...really...do you think it's just Chipotle employees who "overestimate" their servings? They're a bunch of kids working for minimum wage at a restaurant...not sure what it to be expected here. I would think that one would understand that even if amounts are posted on a website, when it comes to eating out, it's really a crap shoot as to what you're getting...I pretty much chalk any meal out to around 1000 calories or so.

This is not common sense for a lot of people. Many people, particularly if new to counting, will take nutritional info on an official website or in-store chart as fact.

Too often people run up in these threads, guns blazing, and forget that this isn't MFP-Advanced. This place is swarming with people who don't consider things that us experienced dieters (sorry, lifestylers for all the extra sensitive) take for granted.

Several people have already posted in this thread alone saying "thanks for the heads up".

Since we're blowing everyone's minds, and everyone says they're going to avoid restaurants:

The USDA allows for 20% error on packaged foods nutrition labels. So the error you see in restaurants exists in your cupboards too. Some things will be lower than you think, some will be higher, and hopefully they will cancel out. EVERYTHING in nutrition seems to be an estimate from TDEE to calorie burns to calorie intake. Do what you think will work. Try it for 4-6 weeks. If it doesn't work readjust. No reason to fear packaged foods or restaurants or avoid them for the rest of your life.

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