Calorie count information is everywhere these days—and soon will be even more so—but how can you be sure that the numbers a restaurant lists on its walls are accurate? You can't! At least not according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. After testing 242 unique foods in 42 restaurants from three states, and they found that while overall the stated numbers were accurate "there was substantial inaccuracy for some individual foods." Nearly one in five of the samples taken, when measured in a laboratory, were at least 100 calories over the amounts listed on the restaurants’ websites. And that isn't even the surprising part.
Just to keep you on your toes, we guess, there were also a number of foods which boasted much lower calorie counts than listed. The paper's authors, who work at Tufts, found that restaurants tend to exaggerate the amounts in higher-calorie dishes (pizza, burgers, sides) but understate the content of lower-calorie foods (soup, salads). So, for example, at an Olive Garden the researchers found that two of the soups (zuppa Toscana and chicken and gnocchi) were 200+ calories over the posted amount but at the same time the steak gorgonzola alfredo came in 238 calories under.
The study's lead author, Susan B. Roberts, points out to the Boston Globe that "this turns dieting on its head, especially if you go to a restaurant and think you’re being good by ordering a soup or salad." Roberts also told the paper that she didn't know why lower-calorie foods, especially salads, came in with such high counts but posited that workers could be "using more dressings and cheese than intended."
All in all yet another reason for us to continue to ignore calorie counts as much as possible. They're really just for the rich anyway, right?
