Ever see nutrition info & think "No way that's right"?

lporter229
lporter229 Posts: 4,907 Member
edited December 2024 in Food and Nutrition
Last night I picked up takeout from Aladdin's Eatery. I got the Jasmine's Favorite with chicken mishwi. It was a standard styrofoam take-out container of rice and beans and four grilled chicken tenders (I ate it for two meals). MFP database said one order is 300 calories. This seemed suspiciously low to me so I tried to find an alternate source. Aladdin's website did not offer nutritional info. dwlz.com and livestrong.com had identical nutritional info to MFP. As far as I know, dwlz (Dottie's Weight Loss Zone) gets all of her nutritional info directly from the restaurants. I still have my doubts, so I logged each meal as one full meal. But it got me thinking...do you trust the nutrition info on restaurants websites? Are there regulations that require verification or something like that? I recognize that individual restaurants can alter portion sizes and such, but just how accurate do you think this info is?

Replies

  • garfield2099
    garfield2099 Posts: 19
    I often find that in fact I do not trust a lot of what menus say unless it is things that are reproducible - like hamburgers as they can be weighed and cut to the same size... but what I find myself doing is breaking the meal down to each component and then try to figure out the calories like such.

    Restaurants for the most part are not required to give those values - except for a few places - new york city is starting to require that all food eateries have their information available.

    I know you had other questions - I do not know if they are required to verify but the fact of trusting the numbers - I do not just because portions sizes are not always 10oz - sometimes 13oz and for meat that is a significant difference and will affect the numbers.

    Some sites though break things down to the portion sizes and tell you per oz or lb how things are - I am more trusting to that as I can be the judge but they give me the guidelines!!!
  • tinabell153
    tinabell153 Posts: 292 Member
    The MFP database said that a pecan cranberry chicken salad from Frisch's was over 1,800 calories! So I looked up a cup of pecans and cranberries and the calories are super high, so I'm thinking it was pretty close to being accurate.
  • Zichu
    Zichu Posts: 542 Member
    We had a bag of potatoes with a regular amount of carbs for a potato per 100g. Then the calories were like 30 calories or something stupid per 100g. I was like hell yeh to begin with and entered it, then realized that it was really low, so I decided to use the macro's on the bag and input my own calorie amount which seemed about right for a potato.
  • jenbridges
    jenbridges Posts: 213 Member
    there have definitely been times when I have questioned it!
  • Tenoreo90
    Tenoreo90 Posts: 329 Member
    Yeah, my work cafeteria only recently added low-fat dressing options, before it was Thousand Island, Ranch, Honey Mustard, or Italian. I looked up honey mustard on MFP and got something like 30 cal/tbsp. At the time I was doing MFP with a co-worker and saw her log this, I tried to tell her ours was more than likely much higher, but she was all, "Works for me!".....yeeah, it can be dangerous. Calorie counting takes one part resources and two parts common sense/intuition.
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