Grey hair – not just for geriatrics anymore! Ah, I love Jay.It’s the weekend! Everyone who’s planning on ending up in a restaurant (minus the tray and apron), raise your hands. To everyone else: what kind of American are you? The economy is failing and only your reckless spending habits can save it! Move, people!! I am a Mystery Shopper (code name a la The Weighting Game: Red Unicorn) and thus will be spending tonight at a “family friendly eatery” to which I’m not allowed to bring my children.
We have discussed before the many ways that restaurants sabotage our food. There’s the added butter and oil to make steamed veggies glisten like Jay Manuel’s chest (see above). There’s the inadvertently (or not) regular cokes subbed for diet. And who can forget the portion sizes overloading our plates despite lovely and informative flash presentations on portion control on every network’s morning show plus twice on Oprah?
Before we had just the admission of a few brave workers in the food service industry and our (queasy) guts to go on. Now we have evidence. Two new studies (well, okay, surveys) are out to tell us exactly how restaurants get us coming and going, hoping that one day we will all be stuck like Winnie the Pooh – the first noted binge eater in children’s literature – in Rabbit’s hole after consuming an entire winter’s worth of honey. Then we will have no choice but to eat their fat and sugar laden fare.
Restaurant Tactic Number 1: Hide the Evidence
Eat This, Not That called out many popular restaurants a year ago for food atrocities against mankind. For example, every omelette on IHOP’s menu comes in at over 1,000 calories and 55 grams of fat. Most restaurants surveyed a year ago were smarter than white flour-addled IHOP and refused to disclose their nutritional information. Enter New York’s new law requiring truth in calorie labeling.
This year Eat This, Not That is following up with the most egregious sinners
to see who was caught red handed by the new laws. The answer: everyone. My fave “progress” report is: “Arby’s has stopped advertising “all-natural” chicken. The assistant manager at the Emmaus, Pennsylvania, location told our reporter that he doesn’t think the chicken is all-natural anymore. We wonder if it ever was.”
Restaurant Tactic #2: Lie To Your Face
Now that other cities are considering following in New York’s footsteps, it is getting harder for companies to avoid listing their ingredients and nutritional information. And with the advent of a little wonder called The Internet, they can’t claim distribution overhead or cost prohibitions for preventing them from ‘fessing up.
So they lie. They print one thing on their menu, say, Macaroni Grill’s “Skinny Chicken” listed at 6 g of fat and less than 500 calories. But when an independent lab tested the maligned chicken, it topped out at 49 grams of fat and 1,022 calories! And it doesn’t even taste good!! Seriously, I’ve ordered that. It’s icky. For that kind of calorie wattage I could have just gotten what I really wanted, a DQ Nerds Blizzard (40 g of fat and 900 calories for a medium) and gone home happy.
Restaurant Tactic #3: Make Bad Comparisons
It’s seems to be the industry standard to proudly proclaim, “At least we’re not McDonalds!!” But in fact sit-down restaurants do way more caloric damage than the Golden Arches and its kin:
[a] menu analysis of 24 national chains revealed that the average entree at a sit-down restaurant contains 867 calories, compared with 522 calories in the average fast-food entree. And that’s before appetizers, sides, or desserts-selections that can easily double your total calorie intake.
Now What?
I cook three meals a day, usually from scratch, 6.5 days a week. Plus snacks. For the love of little green apples, I deserve to eat one meal cooked, served and cleaned up by someone other than myself! And I’d like to do it without undoing all the clean eating I’ve been sort-of good about all week.
How can we expect people to make healthy decisions about food when we’re tricked and lied to?
awwwww maaaan, why do calories have to ruin everything?
stupid restaurants….now i wont be able to trust anything.
i really did think that switching my diet for regular was the biggest thing i had to worry about.
http://www.groundedfitness.com
I really wish you hadn’t shared the calorie count on the Blizzard. OH, how I loves me a Butterfinger Cheesecake Blizzard.
As for eating right when eating out, I just try to pick items that would be hard to hide too many calories in and then assume that the calories are still double what I hope them to be, eat half and call it good.
I try to eat just half of my meal and take the other half with me. Of course, I can’t always stop myself (Red Robin!) but when I do, I feel proud of myself.
Get the hubby to cook on the other .5 day then!
There’s hardly any nutritional stats for restaurants in the UK, and I suspect the disordered part of my brain would be hesitant to trust them even if they were (rightly so, it would seem!!)
My answer to avoid fat-traps is to order simple food with the preparation method described(grilled meat, steamed vegetables, yada yada) so I at least have more of an idea what I’m getting myself into. Even if it turns out to be a few more calories than I’d normally have, at least it’s doing my body some good.
I have to say though that a lot of the time when I order the “safe” or “healthy” option I feel like I’m missing out on all the fun – so the thought that it’s not as low-calorie as the menu claims and I would be better off tucking into something “bad” is just upsetting!!
I rarely eat out with friends anyway, so when I do I tend to go for something yummy regardless of the calorie cost. However when I’m eating out for a work lunch or something boring or more frequent I tend to be a lot more careful.
As a bit of a foodie it ANNOYS me above all, as there’s no reason why we can’t have tasty food without tons of fat, salt and sugar. Proper seasoning is a skill!
Enjoy your meal!
TA x
love JAY.
second only to Miss. Jay—but I digress.
I guess I always figured that they lied to us (is that indicative of my exes? who can say) and RELISH (Im food pun’y) in the fact that IM NOT COOKING and I can sit and enjoy the company and let the calories fall where they may.
that said I realize I dont eat out often so I CAN do that.
M.
I always knew they lied! Restaurants and exes!
I approach the menu by looking for what appears to be the simplest fair. Then, I realize it probably isn’t any healthier than the delicious sounding item I really want. So I order what I want instead of what I “think” I should get.
I do feel that I eat healthy enough during the rest of the week that one fatsaltbutter laden meal isn’t going to derail my hard work. We all need indulgences, after all!
Sigh.
I was always afraid of this. I DO like to eat out–though tend not to frequent chains. But I’d like to think when I do actually go somewhere with nutritional info available, that they weren’t LYING about it.
Hope there are criminal prosecutions and big penalties, but what are the chances of that?
Well, for me, since I pretty much eat at home all week, I do allow myself a very evil meal at a restaurant once a week. When I eat out, I don’t want to be looking for the blandest food around, I can do that home and it tastes better. And when in doubt about the real nutritional content of a food, go have sushi.
Oh, how I want sushi right now…
My goal, if they ever create a “Do not serve list” at restaurants, is to be number one on their list! Maybe, I can get a “Fear This Patron” t-shirt to wear when I go out to eat! It’s only fair to warn them that an educated consumer is coming!
Thanks for educating us, Charlotte!
Alright, maybe I am clueless, but how do you ever make an omelet with that many calories and fat grams? Seriously, what do they add? An entire cube of butter? I have never trusted restaurants, but now I am curious.
I heart both Jay and Miss Jay.
I actually just ate something off the Applebees WW menu last night. And not only was the server befuddled by my request, because apparently its such a rarely ordered item, but he asked why I was eating off the Weight Watchers menu, because i didn’t look like i needed to. Meant as a compliment, but still weird, and IMO as a former waitress, inappropriate.
And the answer to his question, as most of us health bloggers know, is that I look this way because I’m careful about what i eat (most of the time, anyway).
I checked my meal on the analysis list, and while the calories were close enough by my standards, the fat was higher. On the meals where the calories are so close but the fat is so much higher, that smacks of a re-engineered recipe to me, as opposed to sloppy portion control/prep in the kitchen.
Charlotte, I posted about pretty much this very same thing today, but my post was so much rant-y and incoherent. You rock, girl!
I think they lie because they know that people will come back if the food tastes good, and what makes it taste good is butter, fat, and salt. So as long as people don’t know what’s in it, they’ll happily eat there again and again. So they hide what they know people don’t want to hear, and lie about the rest.
i was wondering how u were going to tie in the Jay manuel glistening chest pic. Nice work.
I waitressed a bunch in high school and college and two tricks I remember: 1) eggplant soaks up oil like a sea sponge, so what seems like a dry grilled slice may be holding pounds of grease. 2) Chefs like to top everything with butter to make it pretty. Steak. Steamed veggies. Everything. It’s like adding a candy bar to your meal except, as you noted, you miss out on the DQ deliciousness of candy and chocolate.
-Detective Pink Greatdane
(PS I only learned, like, 2 years ago, that unicorns are not real 🙁
i’ve suspected the lying thing. “you say this whole meal is x amount of calories and x amount of fat … but from what i know of x food, i’m pretty sure that’s just the meat and not the side dishes, thanks.”
grrr.
Sneaky, sneaky bastards. I’ve eaten the Skinny Chicken, too, and I agree. Not tasty. And apparently not healthy. Game over.
I’m a huge fan of Jason’s Deli’s salad bar. They have all organic ingredients and as long as you stick to the raw stuff, you’re good. And they have big plates so you can pile up a big ol massive salad.
Wow, his chest really DOES glisten…
I prefer the oreo blizzard, myself. Yummy!
And people wonder why, when I go to restaurants, I order water and ask for no dressing and if I can get something whole wheat and not get x ingredients… even WITHOUT all that junk, I’m still getting a pretty calorie-laden meal. I’m just trying to do a little bit of damage control. My philosophy is to always assume the worst at restaurants. You just can’t trust anyone anymore!
This is so true! We go to restaurants all the time (safer than my cooking), but often we share 1 meal between 3 of us, and have no problem feeling full.
Oh and regarding the Blizzard…you haven’t lived til you’ve tried the Cotton Candy Blizzard….thank God it’s just 1 month per year.
Now I want an IHOP omelette, a blizzard and Nerds. Altogether.
And don’t ruin my fantasies – Unicorns are real, darnit. I still have my collection of figurines from when I was 8.
We, also, eat a home most of the time (although we had Chik Fil A coupons that expired yesterday, and we couldn’t use them all at once, so we went twice. In one day.), and so when we do go out, I order whatever I want. Well, within reason. Because if I ordered as many margaritas as I really want, it would be a bad scene.
I have this theory that you could predict someone’s weight and health my how often they eat french fries. But I’ve never seen it tested. BUt oh, do I love me some french fries. With mayo.
MJB – gotta agree with you on the Red Robin! We’ve only been there twice, but I dream of that place.
Why can’t everyone just be honest?
Seriously, there are restaurants that I won’t even look at because I’ve scanned their menu online and know the nutritional content is awful! The only one that gets me is Cracker Barrel. I try to use the ignorance is bliss approach with them because they absolutely refuse to post nutritional info…I wonder what will happen to those Cracker Barrels in NY? Or do they even have those?
At the very least, I eat out half the time, and at most, I eat 2-3 meals per week at home. So I just make sure to get things that seem reasonable, and realize if it feels like I’m eating more calories than I think I am, I probably am.
One thing I learned was never get the meal sized salads when you’re out, invariably those things have like over 1k calories and so much fat. If I’m going to splurge, it surely is NOT going to be on a salad.
I appreciate the irony! When publishing nutritional info backfires, stop publishing it! HaHa
(But seriously, why even publish nutritional data for Hooters? Are there really guys that are concerned about “healthy choice eating” while ogling the waitstaff?)
We ate at a buffet last night, the kids earned a free meal there thru the library’s summer-reading program. We finally left because 1) everything tastes the same — from the salad to the pork to the steak to the fried veggies to the desserts. And 2) we just felt so bad for the many obese people surrounding us.
But I couldn’t resist re-telling my favorite Jay Leno joke to wifey — announcing the new Eat-Everything diet: you can eat whatever you want, as much as you want, but you have to eat in a roomful of naked overweight people!
(Sorry, I love that joke.)
Well, it seems that all of this “news” is coming out as I am on vacation. It has been quite disgruntling (sp?) trying to pick out healthy meals. I suppose that it doesn’t help that I’m more of a grazer (sp??)and feel quite unsatisfied by eating 3 large meals (ie bloated)
Restaurants aren’t the only ones fooling people. I watched on diet.com a video how even if you read the back of labels. Some foods aren’t exactly what they say you’re getting in calories. Like the 100 calories foods for example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KprHi48xxE
Hope you don’t mind me putting link on here.
We very rarely go to restaurants anymore, so when we do,we try to order things we really love, that we don’t usually eat at home. And then we split it, and usually end up taking a lot of it home with us, anyway. I just order what I want and try to enjoy it, then save some for lunch the next day. But it is amazing how HUGE the portions are, and how much STUFF they put in the food!
The Bag Lady gets to eat out once every couple of months, if she’s lucky! She is so glad she didn’t see this post before she went to town today, because, unexpectedly, the Cowboy finished work early and took her for an early supper. To a real sit-down restaurant. For the third time this year.
He shared a little of his clam chowder with her (thick enough for the spoon to stand in it – it was delicious!) and she ate half of her meal. Gee, that reminds her…the other half is just waiting to be warmed up in the new microwave she splurged on today… Bye.
Ugh, I always order omelets when I dine at breakfast menu restaurants. They always seemed like the safest choice, and you can get them stuffed with veggies. I think I always underestimate my calorie intake at restaurants. Oh well, I rarely eat out, and so it’s not going to destroy me every once in a while. One question…nerds in Blizzards? I didn’t know that was an option.
Quick story- Couple years ago went to Ruby Tuesdays and they had just put ALL nutritional facts on EVERY menu item. (I hope that marketing person was fired)
So I asked the waiter ‘How bad has business been since they did this’ and he laughed and said ‘it’s been terrible and it was a terrible idea.’
There was this one burger, all I remember was it was 800 calories and like 45 grams of fat. He told me he usually sold 15-20 a week and since they changed the menu he hadn’t sold one.
If restaurants told the truth, or something even close, they would be out of business in no time.
Ok, everyone wake back up. I am done.
Yesterday I ate at a nice (translation: expensive) restaurant, and it was obvious that the wait-staff was trying very aggressively to steer us toward the most expensive meals possible, complete with extras like appetizers, lots of side dishes, and the final sales pitch came from the waiter who brought the platter of dessert items, all ready to be eaten with no waiting.
I tried to stick with my diet, but I succumbed to some of the extras. Good salesmanship trumps good intentions.
I kind of hate the laws forcing restaurants to disclose their nutritional info. At most, they should have it available for those who ask for it.
I cook the vast majority of my meals from scratch, using fresh, whole foods. I eat out for fun, to hang out with friends and family, and to eat something that’s new to me or that I can’t/don’t make myself. I don’t need the law to babysit and “protect” me from my own choices. The nutritional info won’t stop me, but it annoys me that that’s the intention.