Do you trust fast food nutrition on their websites?

When I worked at McDonald's the ketchup on the burgers are calibrated so is the hotcake batter. Everything is made the same everytime. I trust it, but don't eat it anymore.

WickedPineapple wrote: »

I worked at arby's. We weighed the roast beef every time and any other meats came in pre-weighed portions. (Otherwise you run the risk of putting on too much meat which equals less profit.) However, the fries were more willy nilly. Just whatever fits into the certain sized container. So I'd trust the sandwich info as accurate and the fries as pretty inaccurate (which is one of the reasons I tend to stay away from them).

I f'n LOVE Arby's, and I know that's a minority opinion. My go-to, since I can't squander calories on anything but the best, is to get 2 regular roast beef sandwiches, throw away one bun, and have a gut-busting mega beef burger. It's so much fat and protein that it'll satisfy me most of a day and you know what, it's not that bad on the nutrition-o-meter.

500 kcal, 36 carbs, 24 fat, 37 protein.

My question is... how the heck do you make that beef? It's obviously processed and industrialized somehow, it doesn't look like any beef I've ever purchased. Did it weird you out "cooking" that stuff?

Zedeff wrote: »

WickedPineapple wrote: »

I worked at arby's. We weighed the roast beef every time and any other meats came in pre-weighed portions. (Otherwise you run the risk of putting on too much meat which equals less profit.) However, the fries were more willy nilly. Just whatever fits into the certain sized container. So I'd trust the sandwich info as accurate and the fries as pretty inaccurate (which is one of the reasons I tend to stay away from them).

I f'n LOVE Arby's, and I know that's a minority opinion. My go-to, since I can't squander calories on anything but the best, is to get 2 regular roast beef sandwiches, throw away one bun, and have a gut-busting mega beef burger. It's so much fat and protein that it'll satisfy me most of a day and you know what, it's not that bad on the nutrition-o-meter.

500 kcal, 36 carbs, 24 fat, 37 protein.

My question is... how the heck do you make that beef? It's obviously processed and industrialized somehow, it doesn't look like any beef I've ever purchased. Did it weird you out "cooking" that stuff?

Have you ever been to a grocery store deli and seen the big packaged meats in the display cases? The beefs are received at the stores like that, except frozen (if I remember correctly) and not as nice looking. They actually roast the beefs in an oven for three hours in the morning and then slice it to order. So pretty standard and not too weird.

I also used to work at a grocery store deli. The beef at Arby's is comparable to the cheap turkey/ham they have in grocery store delis. However, those grossed me out more than the meat at Arby's because the meat was slimy.

_tierachanel wrote: »

Occasionally I will enjoy fast food and always log what I eat. I get my information off the restaurants website. Do you trust that information? It bothers me to think I could be thinking the calories are "this" but really is "that". Like, the small fry I ordered may have been more closer to a medium..

Do you know a better way to get a more accurate count of calories? Scale? Just wanted to see what you guys think.

I trust it. I don't have the patience to fuss about over it.

To an extent, especially for places like McDonald's who are pretty thorough about using the same measurements of foods each time. That's why you generally get the same thing every time. However, all it takes to add a hundred calories is to add an extra tablespoon of mayo. Some places will be more particular than others.

Zedeff wrote: »

Mr_Knight wrote: »

I trust fast food nutritional information more than I trust restaurant nutritional information. The reason is that fast food margins are very very thin, they *have* to get close and consistent to their defined servings, and the food products themselves are far more standardized.

100% agreed.

For the poster that said that fast food workers aren't weighing everything and you could end up with more food than advertised, I guess this is true, but you'd be at least equally likely to end up with less food for the same reason. You get a few extra fries, a touch less mayonnaise on the burger, the drink isn't topped up all the way... is that more or less calories than advertised?

It's a mean. Log it that way. This week's fast food might be over, next week's might be under but they'd vary by fairly little and in the end it's a wash/

Haha yeah. I had a theory that the best way to get close to the mean (advertised calorie value) was to have a higher sample size, ie eat a specific fast food meal a lot of times :bigsmile:

I swear every time I get French fries from Burger King and weigh them at home, somehow they are always the exact weight listed (143g I believe). Okay, okay, maybe not exact but the listed weight or very close to it.