Calorie Counts on Restaurant Menus are not Accurate

This can be found upsetting for those on a diet or trying to lose weight!  Researchers from the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center at Tufts University reported that most of the calorie counts listed in menus are accurate, but those from the low calorie menu options are on average 100 calories more than what is listed on the menu. The low calorie foods that are highlighted in menus as “appropriate for weight control” contained more calorie and the high calorie foods actually have less calories than listed. This is not good for those who are trying to be health conscious!  This results in taking about 100 more calories than people think which could consequently lead up to 15 pounds of weight gain over one year.

The listed counts on restaurant menus are usually the average amount of calories from several different plates of the same meal, so the researchers say there is no promise of accuracy in how many calories you are consuming when you order your food. The researchers receive their data from 269 food items at 42 fast food and sit down restaurants including McDonald’s, Olive Garden, and Outback Steak House. They also concluded that the fast food restaurants are more accurate with their calorie counts than the sit-down restaurants.

What do you think of this new report?

Read original article here from Times Healthland

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