RICHMOND, Va. -- Going out to eat can be a treat, but how do you know how many calories you’re getting with your order? It can get tricky for Chesterfield mom Leslie Dulay. She uses Weight Watchers to help measure, count and weigh her food.
"This is Lois. She retired because I wore her buttons out and this is Frieda," Dulay said as she showed off her very used food scale she named Lois. She affectionately named her new scale Frieda.
This way of life helped Dulay drop 100 pounds. While she usually avoided the camera, Dulay did share one of the rare pictures of her at her heaviest.
"I don't want to go back. It makes me want to keep doing what I’m doing," she said.
At home, she said she could measure every ounce and every calorie, something she could not do dining out.
"It's hard because you don't know what you're getting," she said. "It means you give up that control."
Restaurant Calorie Count
Fast food and restaurant chains with 20 or more locations are required to list the number of calories in each menu item. The new rules were a provision of the Affordable Healthcare Act and were designed to help you make healthier food choices.
"I think it's really great to have that information, but I think we're a work in progress," Frances Elwood, a Clinical Dietitian with Johnston Willis Hospital, said. She said she believed for the most part customers got what they ordered, but added problems arise with portion size and substitution.
"If the chef is pressed for time or they ran out of half and half, an ingredient for sauces, what they may do is use a pre-made sauce and kind of doctor it up," Elwood said. Such a decision could pack on extra sugar, fat and calories.
Restaurant Calorie Test
We wanted to check the accuracy of calories posted on restaurant menus, so we tested the calories in dishes from four restaurants. We ordered the healthier options meals from the Cheesecake Factory, Applebee’s, Noodles & Company and Taco Bell.
I went through Taco Bell’s drive thru to order something from the Fresco menu. It’s the lighter option. I didn’t see Fresco food items listed on the menu at the Short Pump location, but it was listed on the company’s website.
Someone over the drive thru speaker said to make the meal healthier, they take the cheese off. That was how they turned the regular bean burrito into a Fresco Burrito.
Once the food was served, we sealed up the containers and packed up the four meals. The food was shipped off to a USDA certified food testing lab in New Jersey. The goal? To determine just how many calories were loaded into each dish.
The Results
The Cheesecake Factory Tuscan Chicken
Menu: Under 590 calories
Our Test: 406 calories
Noodles & Company Bangkok Curry
Menu: 480 calories
Our Test: 461 calories
Applebee’s Steakhouse Bruschetta Sirloin
Menu: Under 600 calories
Our Test: 361 calories
Taco Bell Fresco Bean Burrito
Menu: Under 350 calories
Our Test: 418 calories
Taco Bell had the only dish with more calories than advertised. In response, Taco Bell corporation sent a statement, which said our findings fell within government-allowed nutritional guidelines and that the difference in calories could have resulted from the way the food was prepared, or the ingredients used.
Conclusion
Frances Elwood said she believed restaurants were trying to trim down their menus, but admitted they were in a tight spot.
"Not everybody embraces smaller portions and lean proteins, healthy fruits and vegetables so they're walking a fine line," Frances said.
We showed Leslie Dulay the results of our food test and the one from Cheesecake Factory caught her eye.
"We get that all the time when I go there. That's good," she said.
Here’s some food for thought the next time you dine out. A recent study found posting calories on menus did not necessarily make people eat less. In fact, one researcher called it "white noise" on an already crowded menu.
