If You Can't Trust Macaroni Grill, Who Can You Trust?
I’m suspicious, in general, of nutrition information provided by restaurants. The lowfat ice cream cone at McDonald’s is supposedly 150 calories, but I’ve had them hand me a cone that was piled so high with swirls that it was about to tip over, the dairy equivalent of a game of Jenga. I know full well that’s probably at least double the alleged 150 calories.
This kind of thing is the reason I only get one scoop of tuna on my Subway tuna sandwich; I don’t want to wildly overestimate how many calories I’m ingesting because nutrition information is so imprecise. Point is, I’m paranoid anyway. So when I read about the huge inaccuracies in nutrition info provided by restaurants, I wasn’t completely surprised. Still, the “Skinny Chicken” at Macaroni Grill having 500 extra calories? That doesn’t seem excusable to me. Weetabix says:
There’s nothing wrong, of course, with eating yummy restaurant food or consuming 1,000 calorie meals. I feel no shock and dismay to learn that Cheesecake Factory’s bread and butter is loaded with fat and calories, because the Cheesecake Factory never pretended that it was the healthy choice. We’re adults and we make our own decisions… but seriously, it boils down to informed consent. If you sell us on the fact that your chicken is a saintly choice, then it’s not unreasonable to feel betrayed when you realize that you were just had.
Here is a PDF with the data. And coincidentally, Gael just posted about the 20 saltiest foods in America, and Macaroni Grill is the worst offender on that list, too, with three items on the list, including the saltiest dish in America (Chicken Portobello, 7,300 mg sodium, 1,020 calories, 66 g fat).
For someone who eats out only occasionally, or who varies her diet a lot, or who doesn’t think about nutrition information as a matter of course, this might not be as big of a deal. But if you have your favorite meal on a regular basis, and it turns out to be twice as calorific or fattening or salty as you expected, wouldn’t you have a right to be pissed off? Where do you fall on that spectrum? Do you care about this issue at all, and what are the implications from a size-positive standpoint? Do you think it’s wrong to care about calorie content at all? What do you think?
Posted by mo pie
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When I eat out, it’s usually with DH, and since he’s type 2 diabetic, I’m more concerned with carb counts than I am with calorie counts. But if their calorie counts are so far off, their carb counts probably aren’t going to be any better. Most of the time, I do my own guesstimate of carb counts to figure out how much insulin DH needs for a meal when we eat out and go by that. I don’t pay attention to calories, ever, anymore. Calories in – Calories out does not equal weight loss and doesn’t signify anything as far as one’s health is concerned. Since we don’t eat out that often, calorie counts on menus don’t mean much to me, I’m going to eat what I want to eat at the time, no matter how many/few calories are in it.
If I ate out more and so it was a part of my regular diet, I’d be angrier. As it is, if I go out I tend to get something I know isn’t healthy and really enjoy it (or else something that’s way too much of a pain in the butt to make at home, usually also unhealthy). It’s definitely ridiculous that the published calorie counts are so far off, though, and it seems like companies need to try WAY harder to be realistic about these things, esp. if they’re saying it’s all “guiltless” or whatever.
I stopped trusting them after they took the penne arrabiata off the daily menu. And when a waiter told me that something I had been eating there for months because I thought it was vegetarian was actually cooked in chicken broth. Then I moved to a Macaroni Grill-free land.
But now all chain restaurants have to post their calories. Pthhhhhpt. Stupid NYC.
It pisses me off royally. I’m much more likely to spend my money at your restaurant if you make the nutritional information available. If it is this incorrect — that’s like false advertising.
As someone who is much happier and healthier since I stopped dieting, I don’t care a fig if nutritional information counts are off. I take it as a given that they are because of natural variances in food composition.
I’ve never seen two identically sized chicken breasts with exactly the same amount of batter soaking up exactly the same amount of fryer oil. So, I expect nutritional information labels to tell me general composition rather than exact count. In the case of fried chicken, I expect to see a great deal of sodium, fat, and calories along with a nice helping of protein.
As someone who may be hypoglycemic and definitely needs to avoid sodium, I’d be distressed to realize that a label had greatly misrepresented the basic fat/carb/fiber/sodium/sugar proportions of a dish.
I’m good at listening to my body, but those ball park estimates help me a great deal when my internal signals get thrown off because I didn’t eat soon enough or ended up having too many carbs because I was busy and didn’t have access to my usual variety. Those ballpark estimates help me avoid ending up with too much or too little of a thing when I don’t have access to my usual foods.
Nutritional labels give us a good idea of what kinds of things might be in our food, but it’s impossible for them to give us exact counts. Besides, even if they could give us exact counts, they still can’t tell us how our bodies will process what’s in our food. Enjoy what you eat. Enjoy how you move your body. Mother Nature will take care of the rest, whether you like it or not.
I think your feelings are understandable and not all unreasonable. I also check out nutritional information for some of our restaurant favorites and I would also feel pissed off if I discovered the information is inaccurate — even more if it seems like the company deliberately lied about it. I don’t think its anti-intuitive eating or that it goes against the size-acceptance grain to be cognizant of calories and other nutritional information. You can both be health-conscious and promote size acceptance — recognizing how many calories your body needs for optimal health does not automatically mean that you’re diet-obsessed or that you’re afraid of becoming fat. I don’t think calories should dictate what we order or eat, but if my favorite dish has a bazillion calories, I’d still eat it, but in moderation.
What it boils down to for me is that the restaurant seems to be willfully and deliberately deceiving customers in order to boost sales and patronage. This is wrong, regardless if you care about calories or not. The foods we buy at the grocery store have to reflect truth in nutritional advertising. We should expect the same of food served in restaurants.
This really steams my vegetables. When I do eat out, and I don’t do it that much, I try to make a choice that I can feel good about, and now I don’t feel so good anymore. It’s already difficult for me, as a vegetarian, to find things to eat, now I have to worry that they’re lying to me as well??
I don’t have to worry that much. I have learned to just stop eating when I’m full, and thus broken my food addiction. The problem is that these restaurants are claiming that they have nothing to do with the large amount of obesity in America, and then basically foiling any effort for busy people who eat out to lose weight! It’s horrendous!
We pay a lot to eat at these restaurants, the least that they can do is learn how to use a measuring cup and make fairly consistent portions. A hundred or so calories is not such a big deal, but when it gets above that it’s outrageous.
I don’t know that I’m so upset with the nutritional information being wrong as much as I am upset when restaurant menus don’t include all ingredients in a dish. If you’re going to add bacon to my chicken sandwich, I’d like to know. If you’re going to put sour cream on my taco, I REALLY need to know that. There are too many food allergies/dislikes/etc I need to know what to tell you when I order so I don’t end up with a sandwich covered in bacon. bleuch… I just don’t care for bacon.
you are so right. we trust these restaurants that they are giving us what we are asking for. this really makes me question the ww meals at applebees.
thanks for posting this it will make me think about what i order and where i may go for my next meal out.
If you have watched the movie Waiting and are still surprised by this, or anything else that might happen at a resturant… then you clearly need to go back and watch the movie again. Seriously… your food is being prepared and handled by miserable people who work crappy hours, are yelled at all the time and get paid dick.
I feel that if you’re going to publish information, it ought to be correct, or what’s the point?
I don’t count calories myself, but I don’t believe it’s wrong to, if you find it helpful for whatever reason. And I would be VERY annoyed to find mystery ingredients I wasn’t expecting: my husband’s allergic to nuts and nut oils, and has had quite a few reactions even after checking with staff that there wouldn’t be any nuts in a dish…
Heh. You guys are WAAAAAY too trustful of restaurant cooks and chefs. I didn’t read the .pdf, but from what my husband’s told me he’s seen during his decade-plus of working in restaurants (most recently at Macaroni Grill), it’s surprising that even some of those figures agree with the food that shows up on your plate.
In most restaurants, cooks aren’t highly trained. Some cooks can’t even cook at home, yet they’re hired to prepare food for service. Also, there’s not time to be super-accurate with measurements, so nothing pre-measured is usually eyeballed. So where one person may have 3 oz of asparagus, the other person will have 5 oz. Or three tablespoons of the garlic EVO in your mashed potatoes instead of four.
The other thing I’m surprised about is people expecting to get even remotely healthy food when eating out. If you’re expecting to walk into Macaroni Grill, McDonald’s, or Red Lobster, for example, and eat low-salt, low-fat, low-cholesterol, then you’re going to be drinking a lot of water.
Since I stopped trying to lose weight, I don’t care anymore. I think I’m a lot happier and healthier mentally for it. If I have too much salt, I’ll get thirsty later. If I eat a huge dinner, I probably won’t want much for breakfast.
But, having said that, I do really care about the ingredients list. I’m trying to stay away from chemical frankenfoods and also hidden soy, since I think I might be allergic to it. Both of those things happen at large chains like Macaroni Grill. My mother is allergic to gluten and most nuts. Restaurants are a nightmare for her. Accurate ingredients lists would help.
I expect nothing good for losing weight from a restaurant, so I don’t eat out when I’m focused on it. I made an exception last weekend for a friend in town and ate at — Macaroni grill. He got the skinny chicken and I got the skinny salmon, but the shocker was the BREAD. 520 calories per loaf!! Based on this report, I’ll go back for the fish, but that’s it. If the server brings bread, I’m sending it back.
I think it would put me in an more aware state concerning eating out, I don’t think I’d be pissed off. I’d more likely let it go and not give it more thought than needed.
In the past 6 months I’ve cut back on eating out in general. I’ve accepted that the only way you’re going to really know what you put in your mouth is if you prepare food yourself from fresh and unprocessed ingredients.
In terms of health you are the only one, when it comes down to it that really gives a shit about you.
It certainly isn’t a restaurants prime focus.
I’ve never seen two identically sized chicken breasts with exactly the same amount of batter soaking up exactly the same amount of fryer oil.
This is the reason why I’ve never understood calorie counting. I mean, you just CAN’T KNOW, can you??
This is pretty funny, because I have to deal with calories a lot. I work in clinical nutrition, and a large part of my day is spent counting (other people’s) calories.
I attended a scientific conference recently that was entirely about nutrient databases, and assessing the nutrient content of food. It is a surprisingly fraught area. Inaccuracies are everywhere, from the very beginning of the process with various chemical assays, to nutrition labels on food products, and then down the pike to shady “nutrition info” websites with really shaky numbers. (Just the other day, I was looking at the Daily Plate for something work-related, and caught a glaring error where a food item was composed of 128% carbohydrate. ORLY? 128%?)
And that’s why, in my personal life, I try to rely on internal signals as much as possible. Failing that, steady portion sizes are a good enough estimate to strike a balance between over/undereating.
For my own purposes, I don’t care so much if a calorie count is off, but for other people who are looking at nutrition info for much more important reasons — food allergies, or carbohydrate content if someone is diabetic and on insulin/oral medications that carry a risk of hypoglycemia, or celiac disease, or kidney disease where eating too much potassium can kill a person outright — in those situations, I would like dead-on accurate information.
Or at least, information that is accurate as possible. It’s never going to be perfect.
I posted the below response over at ElasticWaist, but I wanted to mention it here, too, since nobody else has brought it up yet:
Before you panic, you should watch the videos that go with the story: http://tinyurl.com/5km263
When this video first showed up on the interweb, they showed that for that alarming Skinny Chicken (the worst offender), they include the butter and rolls that were given to them with the meal in the calorie count. I don’t think anyone ordering “healthy” options thinks that the nutritional information includes side items such as butter (seriously…) and rolls. With the butter and rolls included, they came up with the numbers shown in the .pdf…
The funny thing is that they’ve since changed the video (I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who noticed it was employing sketchy logic) so that it shows the Skinny Chicken now having only 320 calories and 14 g of fat (advertises 600 calories, 6 g of fat). Awesome how they back-pedaled on the video but left it with the old numbers on the .pdf…
If they were so blatantly manipulative with the data in this case, I wouldn’t be surprised if they screwed with some of the other numbers and just weren’t silly enough to put such things in the video… Sure, the numbers will never be exact due to inexact measurement (they don’t break out the digital scale for every ingredient most places), but this study is attempting to be alarmist and I wouldn’t put much weight behind it.
Emmo, sorry I didn’t see this over at EW! They counted the bread and butter in the calorie count for the entree? That’s incredibly stupid.
I’m always on the side of – if you’re going to have it, make it right. Similarly to the first commenter’s husband, I have diabetes (though I’m a T1, if he’s on insulin, the issue is the same). I always, always am guessing when I eat food I didn’t prepare, how much insulin to give. I guess I shouldn’t expect to get off that mental jungle gym, because it’s my responsibility to manage my condition, some would say. But if restaurants post the info, as far as carbohydrates, I feel more confident and I think a little less about my “guesstimate” and feel less worried about my blood sugars going into it. If they’re totally off, that makes it harder for me to make a good guess – because of heuristical errors, like, I’m more likely to think something has fewer carbs in it than it does, if I see a number, as opposed to making a guess without one.
One of the best ways to get more nutritious & healthful meals when eating out? DON’T EAT AT CHAIN RESTAURANTS!
Here in LaLaLand (as in most big cities), you can find any number of independent eateries, from coffee shops to ethnic spots to high-end dining rooms, all of which offer you better food (and in the case of the ethnic cafes cheaper), fresher and more interesting choices
than any chain. Also, since most dishes are prepared to order, you can always ask for no salt, no butter, etc. in the preparation.
I’m not at all surprised at how bad the bread is a Macaroni Grill….I’ve never been a fan of it as it’s too greasy (I like adding grease to my bread all by myself).
Why is there no CA Pizza Kitchen on there, though. I’ve so wanted to know, since that is my favorite spot to have a salad or pasta (I really don’t like their pizza much).
I think Macaroni Grill was probably pretty baffled by those extra 500 calories when they wrote the statement of apology. The fact that the dish actually had *less* calories than their menu claims when analyzed properly (without a tub of butter included) makes their half-assed apology seem more reasonable.
I’m a physicist, and in science you don’t trust people who always gets the experimental result they were looking for. I’d say the same is true for journalists who always find the shocking story they’re looking for. I can just hear them at the meeting “These numbers aren’t shocking enough! Add some butter!”
Anyway, for me this story was more a lesson in remembering not to trust bold claims from the media without looking into the details than a lesson in chains being dishonest. I never eat at chains (mostly because I can cook much healthier and more delicious food at home) but I do think they’re making a good-faith effort to make the “healthy” options they serve a reasonable alternative for people who don’t want to consume the equivalent of a whole day’s calories in one sitting…
I don’t care so much about the nutritional information. I take it for granted that restaurant meals are going to be unhealthy. What I wish restaurants would do is stop making portions about 5 times bigger than they need to be. What I like most in a restaurant is the chance to taste a bunch of different foods without having to cook a bunch of different dishes. If I wanted a huge plate of one thing I’d make that myself at home. As a result I hardly ever eat out anymore.
I think calories are a good way to tell if a food is better for you nutritionally. It’s easy to say if something is 250 calories that’s good, but 950 calories is insane.
I think if you want to ignore calories you should be able to, however it is difficult for most people to judge how many calories are in food. Especially food from resturants and what have you. If you want to make all of your food yourself from now on, then you don’t have to worry about calories. You know what you’re putting into the food, and can basically figure out how bad or good that is. Like Olive Oil vs regular Oil for example.
For people who do eat out, it isn’t easy to figure out the calories for things, because you’re not in the kitchen seeing the food be prepared. We live in a world where people don’t have the time to cook every meal. That doesn’t mean that we’re lazy, it means that we’re actually going out and being more productive.
I think health and size-positivity are two different things. You can say, as a part of being size-positive I’m going not to worry about what I’m eating, but that may not be healthy for you. Even though there are alot of people who can get hung up over the number of calories in food, that doesn’t mean we should do away with calories altogether.
am I the only one here who doesn’t think that the first, only, and final point of calorie counts is to avoid calories?(which are, in fact, the ENTIRE point of food) or who doesn’t think that people who want to know calorie/carb/whatever stats are all looking for low calorie/low carb meals? the diabetics have a great point-not everyone who needs to know carbs tries to minimize them. Same issue might come up with calories. Maybe someone is trying to see that they get enough. whatever. It’s kinda rediculous to say “well, just don’t expect a healthy meal when you eat out” to someone who is having an allergic reaction/medical issue because the counts are wrong. lying is worse than just serving unhealthy meals. to me, it is just that simple
The bottom line is we have an obesity opedemic in this country and heart disease is the number one killer of women. Both of these problems fall largely on our diet. Knowing the nutritional content of the food we’re eating is critical to being able to make informed decisions. Personally, I don’t eat at chain (or fast food) restaurants ever. I think they serve poison. In general, the servings are giant, the salt content is more than you need in a week, and dishes are made with low quality ingredients and contain way too much saturated fat and calories. More information is a good thing.
My home town of Portland, Oregon is trying to pass legislation that forces chain restaurants to give the nutritional content (including the calories) of the food they’re serving. Restaurant owners are pretty fired up about this. It’s not fair! Why? If you’re making people fat and unhealthy, stop it. Serve real food that makes your customers thrive and be less FAT. It’s not an unreasonable request.
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Speaking as an Australian resident in England, places like Macaroni Grill give me the shivers. The US has so much farmland, so much good, fresh produce available, and some really, really good food, but its chain restaurants are a blight on the culinary landscape. I can see that the servings are generous, but its hardly value for money. Dodgy nutritional reports are the least of the reasons to avoid them.
I’ve had some nice cheap meals in the US, at independent diners, where the food probably had a huge calorie count. It just feels healthier eating something which wasn’t cooked up in a lab and then processed into equal sized portions in a factory, before being frozen for months.