Good Morning America - the "skinny" on 'healthy' meals...
 

This morning, Good Morning America did a peice on restaurants and their healthy menu features. They went to the restaurants, ordered their low cal, low fat meals and most of them were not even close to what they had listed for fat and calories... even APPLEBEES WW menu.

In some cases at Applebees, the fat was 2-3 times more than what was listed.

And Chilis was significantly more, sometimes double the calories and fat.

Here's the link:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Consumer/s...4909235&page=1

I am not really surprised by this. We still need to use our best judgement on portions. But, it is disappointing that when we "trying" to keep it healthy - we are often being deceived.

isnt that classed as false advertising?

I figured it couldn't be exact -- but that is a large discrepancy. It's hard enough to think you are being on plan and be sabotaged by the very item you think is the best choice!!

I think you'll probably find that calorie counts are based on recipes developed, but not followed exactly. I took a look at the report yesterday, but it was badly laid out. If I remember correctly, most were off on the fat content. It's a simple thing to be way off on. When making a dish I measure oils/fats very carefully. In a busy restaurant I'd suspect it's in a bottle and squirted onto a cook top before grilling.

I think like everything else, you simply need to be careful when eating out. Unless you're eating all of your meals out, a couple of hundred calories difference even once in a while isn't going to be a huge deal.