I'm a little concerned/upset right now and I'm not sure that I can trust the Nutrition info from McAlister's Deli. I was craving something warm and bready so I got a chicken tortilla soup bread bowl that was listed as 334 calories on their website. But when I got the bread bowl it just seemed like it HAD to be more calories. It looks like it could have easily been the equivalent of 4 pieces of white bread which would be around 320 calories at least and their website says their bread bowl is ONLY 140 calories!! Their tortilla soup is supposed to be "cheesy" but they claim is only 150 calories a "cup".

I'm upset because I am very careful with counting my calories and I don't want to be taking in extra! Isn't this information SUPPOSED to be accurate?

It could be accurate in the sense that a cup is what it is listed as a cup on the website. But that doesn't mean that how they serve it is at a cup size. These things are estimates.

Take it home one day as a "to go" with the bread bowl on the side so you can assembly at home.

Then measure/weigh it and see how much of a discrepancy it is.

A.

you could email them and ask...

Also, lots of nutritional lists separate the main dish component from several of its sides, such as the bread bowl itself or the cheese. I don't doubt that some do this on purpose to fool you, but it's also necessary to enable people to customize the nutritional data to just the parts they ate.

That's not crazy for the soup: Campbells' Cheese Tortellini with Chicken & Vegetables Soup (the closest I could find, not condensed) claims to have 110 calories a cup. Other coups often fall in the 100-150 calorie range. Lots of water in soup.

As far as the bread goes, 150 seems low (how heavy is it?), but deli breads/rolls often have surprisingly few calories compared to sandwich bread: they aren't nearly as sweet, and they are often less dense.

Me, I'd order it not in the bread bowl next time, or not eat the bread bowl. But it's probably not crazy-off--not by hundreds of calories or anything like that.

Something else to consider is how much bread is removed to make the "bowl". I'm not familar with the sizes or how much bread is removed, but that may have something to do with the calories seeming low.

Thank you all for your input and perspective!

The soup AND the bread bowl (which was served with the top too) together was supposed to be 334 from their nutritional list. Doing a bit of calorie research I realized that most bread bowls range from 300 to 600 calories just on their own let alone with soup in them.

I'm not so upset now and reminded myself I need to use common sense with all of this. I didn't eat a third of the bread bowl and recorded the bread and the soup together as 450 in my diet log. (300 for the bread bowl and 150 for the soup.)

It is in a restaurant's best interests to underestimate calories and in our to watch them. They are trying to make the most money after all!

I might sound a bit paranoid here (I hope not too much), but I want to make sure I've got accurate counts of what I'm putting in my body.

The cooks and chefs don't carefully measure things out (especially high calorie things like oils) in most places. they do what's easy and fast and what they're used to, and what that tends to be is add fat, salt and such.

This. I used to work at a McAlister's Deli and there is a lot of variation in how much bread an individual cook will take out of the bowl. They don't arrive "pre-scooped." Some people may leave more bread. The calorie counts may have been run with a lot of the insides taken out, but there is no guarantee that will match how an individual cook does it.

I tend to suspect that at most deli-type places what they do for soup is "open can, place in double boiler", but perhaps I am overly cynical.

I used to work at an unnamed high end restaurant, and our soup came to us pre-cooked. It was literally just heated and served. And this was at a nice restaurant where you might go for an expensive dinner out!

I have come to the same opinion and I don't think this is being paranoid, just honest. If you saw charges from the bank you didn't expect, wouldn't you want to know the reason.

In all honesty, soup reheats really, really well (or at least, most types do), so I don't mind that places do this. And it does make me feel like soup you get out likely has something like the number of calories it is supposed to have.