restaurants list?

chopkins127
chopkins127 Posts: 1 Member
in Getting Started
returning to mfp and is there a list of restaurants and calories - or do you just enter it in the food search?

Maybe I'm just completely missing it...
thank you

Replies

  • StaciInGa
    StaciInGa Posts: 60 Member
    I typically look up the restaurant's menu then search in the database to log. Restaurants change their info often, so an old database entry could be wrong. If it is something not from a major chain (so I can't verify calories), I do my best to mentally deconstruct/estimate the calories and choose an entry that is similar and seems reasonable. Sometimes you do have to estimate.

    Example last week ate at a Tex-Mex place that does not provide calorie info. I had 3 grilled shrimp tacos on corn tortilla shells. Each taco used 2 small corn tortilla shells which I know to be 45-50 calories each (so ~100 per taco). There was a cabbage/slaw mix, grilled shrimp, and the sauce/seasoning was not creamy in nature. So I used a listing for some random restaurant for grilled shrimp taco, corn tortilla, for 180 calories each. I figure if the tortillas were 100 per taco, the shrimp + slaw + sauce for 80 seemed reasonably safe.

  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,416 Member
    No there isn't list of restaurants.

    IF the food/restaurant is in the database then some user/member like yourself entered it - so beware. :)

    I do the same thing as StaciInGa does, just find something similar and tweak it if I think I need to. A lot of restaurant food is going to be wrong -even at the restaurant itself unless it's something like McDonalds which uses pre-portioned things. If you're going to some Mom & Pop place, or even somewhere like Applebees, it's going to be a guess at best.

    I've been doing this long enough that I can sort of deconstruct a dish at any restaurant and enter it "close enough." I don't eat out that often. Take a picture and enter it from home. I can eyeball most portions because my digital food scale trained my eyes.

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