If you're watching your weight and eat out frequently, proceed cautiously. That healthful soup, sandwich or entree may have 100 to 275 more calories than the restaurant says, a new study shows.
And those chips and salsa may pack 1,000 calories more than what is stated by the restaurant.
"The calories on your plate may be quite different from what you think you are getting, and the trouble is you can't tell," says senior researcher Susan Roberts of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston.
"I have a Ph.D. in nutrition, and I can't tell if my dinner is 500 or 800 calories just by looking at the plate, and our study shows you can't rely on the restaurants' numbers for an individual meal."
She and colleagues collected 269 restaurant dishes from 42 popular fast-food spots and restaurants, including McDonald's, Burger King, Olive Garden, Taco Bell, Denny's and Chipotle.
The researchers sent the dishes, including hamburgers, chicken tenders, pizza and breakfast entrees, to their laboratory to have the calories analyzed. Then they compared their findings with the calories listed on each chain's nutrition information charts.
Not all foods were way off. In fact, many came close to the mark or had fewer calories than billed, according to the findings in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Calories listed for fast-food restaurants tended to be closer to laboratory measurements than the stated calories of items purchased in sit-down restaurants. This suggests there may be greater differences in how the kitchen staff at sit-down restaurants prepare the meals, says Roberts says, co-author of The 'I' Diet.
Restaurants can play an important role in weight control because people get about 35% of their daily calories from eating out, she says.
Lorien Urban, lead author on the study and a nutrition researcher at Tufts, says, "If you think you're eating too many calories at the meal, you probably are."
The results of the study have implications for the new health care reform law, which requires chain restaurants with 20 or more outlets to post calories on menus and menu boards and to provide additional nutrition information in writing upon request.
"We can't expect restaurants to be spot-on all the time with calories, but there needs to be guidelines to what a reasonable range of accuracy is," Urban says.
Not as it seems
Here's how the calories in the dishes differed from what the
restaurant nutrition information stated:
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