Last week I was having a particularly sluggish day, feeling a little down and super hungry. I made the decision to go to Red Lobster and eat fried shrimp and clams, french fries, cheddar biscuits, clam chowder, and dessert. As soon as I opened the menu I saw calorie counts next to everything, EVERYTHING. I was at a real dilemma. I came to binge and I'm looking at calories? I struggled for 15 minutes with the menu, arguing against my own better judgement "Get the fries! Get the chowder!!" and in the end I couldn't do it. I simply could not bring myself to order a meal that would amount to 2000 calories. Just couldn't! I ended up having a salad with honey mustard (no croutons/no cheese), a petite sirloin with grilled shrimp, mashed potatoes, broccoli, and I even had one cheddar biscuit. My whole meal wasn't more than 700 calories which fit perfectly into my calorie budget and I avoided a binge.
At the end of my meal I thanked the manager and expressed my genuine excitement for the well-designed menu with calorie counts. I can't believe I walked in determined to binge and left feeling in control, it's never happened to me before.
What can we do to have more menus with calorie counts? Who do we petition to? Who do we contact? How do we help spread the message?
I would so love that! We eat out a fair bit and it's sometimes a struggle deciding what to eat. I'll look up the restaurant online if I can but not all of them have a site or nutrition info available. Calories on the menu is a great idea.
I suppose writing to the head office of the chain restaurants would be the best thing to do. If enough people make a request, they might start to listen.
I also live in NYC and I love the calorie counts on menus. It is actually a law in NYC that calories must be posted on menus, but only at chain restaurants. Unfortunately a place like Tavern on the Green doesn't have to do it. But I LOVE that this has been implemented. It really deters me from ordering certain things. It's surprising to see that "low fat" muffins at Starbucks still have over 400 calories! Just not worth it. I wish more cities would adopt this practice. I hate it when I leave NYC and I have no idea how many calories I'm eating.
That's so awesome! I wish the restaurants around here would do that! I have to use my super investigative skills and try to find the information online, however, a lot of the restaurants don't even do that!
I agree that this is an awesome thing. I had heard that NYC had implemented this for chain restaurants. I think it would put a lot more into perspective for people. We went to Outback not that long ago (one of the few places that has a Gluten Free menu for DH) and I looked up calories all day trying to figure out what I could eat before we went. By the way the blooming onion has something like 2200 calories for the whole thing. I could easily eat half of one myself before dinner in my former "fat" life.
I know a lot of places don't want to post the calories because they will complain it will slow business. But it might make them more accountable and learn to cook healthier. There's no reason to slather a grilled steak or chicken breast with butter.
Kudos to you for doing the right thing. I haven't really seen that here. I know some restaurants have a healthy section on the menu and that will list calorie counts, but its never for every item. I wish they would start doing that because I would have a much harder time just "going for it".
I'm often amazed how well this works. We have a soup/salad/bread sort of restaurant called Fresh Choice here, and they've recently switched to putting calories on EVERYTHING. So when I'm assembling my salad, I know I can have half a cup of the chinese chicken salad within my budget, but that croutons will blow me out of the water...and it really does help me make my salad fit perfectly with my allowance!
Yes it's nice, but they'll also be opening up to a new group of people --- dieters! Now most dieters won't be afraid to approach these restaurants. They'll be armed.
I wish they would do this in Michigan... cause honestly I hate having to spend SO much extra time planning where I can go, and what I can have.
I think its becoming more and more common. The last couple chain sit-down restaurants I've been to have had the nutrition information.
I like it, but I don't. It still makes me feel really guilty about some of my past food choices and frustrates me with the lack of healthy options. However, it does make it easier to stick with my plan....
Wow thats awesome. I only wish I had that option around here. I find myself googling nutrition facts AFTER I ate it only to figure out that I didn't chose as well as I thought. If I knew that had THAT many calories I surely would have skipped it. Me and my sister went and got lunch at Panera the other day and I thought I did fairly well until I realized that the COFFEE I had set me over my calories UGH! The coffee was worse than the sandwitch. Why are things so tricky? I really wish food was more regulated. People wonder why Americans are so obese yet nothing is done about it.
That'd be a dream come true for me! I'd love to go back to some of my former favorite restaurants that I've been avoiding simply because they don't post calorie counts online. I can't even find calorie counts online for placed WITH chain restaurants in NYC.
I like it, although I don't take the posted counts as gospel.
I don't take ANY calorie post as gospel, they're rough estimations and just serve as a guideline. Even when reading labels and measuring things out they are often wrong. Just 2 days ago I opened a can of tuna that said that the entire contents (drained) would be 2.5oz which would equal to 150 cal total. Would you believe that I weighed it to be 1.9oz?
Calorie counts are not gospel, take them for what they are and try to stay within a healthy range.
Angie and I usually go for Mexican or Italian at mom & pop places near us and they don't have calorie counts on their menus of course.
However, we do go to Islands (just last Friday) ~ MiMi's (2 weeks ago) ~ California Pizza Kitchen and Chili's....all have the nutrition lists with calorie counts....love-love it!
Calories on Menus - it works!
But I LOVE that this has been implemented. It really deters me from ordering certain things. It's surprising to see that "low fat" muffins at Starbucks still have over 400 calories! Just not worth it. I wish more cities would adopt this practice. I hate it when I leave NYC and I have no idea how many calories I'm eating.
