So has anyone found calorie counts released by chains in NYC? I'm looking to see if any have made it online yet. So far, no luck. Maybe it's still too early. I'd do just about anything for information from Olive Garden and Applebee's...two of my favorite places that I don't eat at anymore because I just don't know what's ok to eat there....

Hidden on Applebee's site I found "We provide nutritional information on all of our Weight Watchers® items, including fat, fiber, calories, and Weight Watchers Points® values. We do not provide nutritional information on other Applebee's® items. With approximately 1,900 locations in the U.S. alone, we use a huge selection of different food vendors to source our food, making it extremely difficult to obtain nutritional information for our items."

Which is just BS.

Yeah, I saw that BS Applebee's excuse...and the Weight Watchers stuff. Unfortunately I'm not too big on the stuff on that menu, for the most part. I want to know what the REAL food is, so I can know not to eat it, to eat half of it, etc...

Maybe it'll make it up one day....

You might want to look up an Applebees or Olive Garden in NYC, and call them. Ask if they can fax you a copy of their menu.

Excellent idea, Fiberlover...

I work in food service and have been following this calorie posting thing pretty closely, and I think it is a great idea. Unfortunately, a lot of places are getting away on technicalities. If an item is a 'special' you don't have to have as complete info. Fast food places, coffee shops, basically anywhere that you order at the counter have to have the info on the actual menu board, on stand up cards in the pastry case, that kind of thing. Full service places only have to have some menus with nutritional info available, they don't have to print it on every menu. So, a lot of full service in NY was only giving the nutritional info menus on request.

There was one story about a restaurant, I think a TGI Friday's, that gave the menus to everyone on the first day and people really freaked out - particularly women - when they saw the info on their standard entree. The example given was a big salad with 1200-1300 calories. When those same women were given a menu without the info they were able to order the salad with freaking out, even though they had just read it two minutes before. The restaurant also sold completely out of the petite sirloin halfway through lunch, sold mostly to women. So a lot of the places moved to the 'on demand' nutritional menu instead of giving it to everyone through the door. That doesn't seem like it is fair to the fast food places that have the info on the wall for everyone to see on every order...

I also read that just because they have to put the info in NY doesn't mean that they will update their website, using the same excuse mentioned above about different suppliers across the country.

Looks like California is the next place that might go with it - LA County first I think, then maybe the entire state.

Asking for a faxed menu from NY is a great idea...

Shannon, I read a similar story...maybe even the same one. It stinks about the technicalities, but at least it' SOMETHING, right? I've been checking the Web sites, but like you said, it's not on there. I'll make a request for the menus and see what I get!

Something is absolutely better than nothing!

On another thread they were talking about the Taco Bell fresco menu, I just went to the link to look at it. They have two different nutrition buttons on their site - one is "Nutrition Info" the other is "NY Nutrition Info". Haven't looked through it to see if they are any different, but thought it was kind of interesting...

NY has banned trans fats in restaurant food--that's the difference. For the most part, none of the items on the NY menu contain trans fats (there are a few items on the regular menu that have .5g of trans fats per serving). There are more items with .5g or higher of trans fats on the national menu. Even a few of the Fresco menu items have .5g of trans fats on the national menu (none of the Fresco menu items on the NY menu have trans fats).