Since I’ve begun to pay attention to my caloric intake, I’ve become really frustrated with the number of small chain or independent restaurants that don’t post the calorie content of their food. I am guessing that it’s a bit of a pain in the ass for a smaller establishment to go through the trouble of determining the calories for each of their menu items, but I don’t have any idea HOW much of a pain it is.
My recollection is that federal law here in the States says that a restaurant with ten locations or more is required to post nutritional info, including calories. What process do they go through to obtain that information? How much does it cost them? Is it so expensive that it’s cost-prohibitive for smaller chains? Or do those who aren’t required to post that info avoid it simply because they don’t want customers focusing on how bad the food is for them? Or are there other reasons not to do it (such as too much variation in the same menu item each time it is cooked)?
There are various strategies for dealing with this. A quick Google search for ‘Calorie counter’ and ‘calorie counter restaurants’ provided a whole plethora of results.
There are other general rules of thumb too. Some experts say eat half of whatever you’re given. Then there are rules like meat consumption should be no bigger than a deck of cards. Etc…
I think you just need to do a little researching my friend.
ETA: To answer your question, it’s very hard to get accurate calorie counts. I vaguely remember some restaurant owners were bitching at the prospect of having to put calorie counts on there items. It isn’t cheap to have that stuff sent to a lab for analysis.
It can be difficult to work out the details, and the results are often inaccurate anyway. But it shouldn’t be hard to figure out for a 12 oz. steak. Unless you have very tight portion control, dishes with lots of toppings and extras can be difficult to arrive at a good number for. For big chains and fast food places with the tight portion control it should be easy. If it’s allowable under the regulations it shouldn’t be difficult to inform the customer of the calories in the main ingredient of most dishes. If a restaurant is serving a soup or a stew there may be no way to tell accurately from one serving to the next.
I’d say if this is that important to you then you should build up your own knowledge and you’ll have a pretty good idea how many calories are in a dish that doesn’t have too many calories.
So basically there are two ways - add up all the calories based on THEIR nutritional labels - or have it lab tested yourself. This is very easy to do, but a little time consuming for more complicated recipes. And you might have to research some of the foods that don’t come with calorie labels.
Apparently at least Starbucks and Chipotle uses the “add it up yourself method”
Not sure how much it costs for human food, but found this site that does it for pet food for $75.00.
And I usually try and order something that is in a database somewhere. You might to know how much their 1/4 cheeseburger is - but you can guesstimate it based on others.
Thanks, guys. I have definitely gotten much better at estimating calories based on content and such in the past few months.
My question was meant to be more focused on the actual process and cost involved in a restaurant getting that analysis done. I appreciate the responses!
I use an android app called Lose It! and lie to it. It has the information for countless chains. If I get a turkey sandwich at the independent place in the next block I record it as a comparable turkey sandwich from Panera.
Which, I realize doesn’t answer the question you asked at all.
I will say that as the owner of a small business a task like compiling and posting calorie counts might be on my To-Do list but would take me ages to get to, unless I was marketing my place specifically to counters of calories.
I distrust published nutrition information anyway because I can order the same thing three times in one week at either my neighbor’s or at Panera and not once get the same amount of mayonnaise on my sandwich.
