The Fitness Guru

Yesterday, I got into a pretty heated debate over the calorie count of an Italian Ice. It was a funny exchange as the guesses were all over the map. The answer is simple: it depends on a) the size of the serving, and b) the amount of sugar in the ice itself. As an Italian Ice is entirely water and sugar, you can estimate the calorie count based on the sugar content: roughly 4.5 calories for every gram of sugar.

But it is rarely that simple to deduce calorie calorie content when eating out. Restaurants have started posting calorie content of their menus. I have stood at the counter on many occasions and wondered what on earth I could eat, given the posted facts. Now, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, those numbers, which many consumer have found discouraging, may not even give us the entire story. According to the article, the calorie counts may be underestimated. Scripps television stations sent out several dishes and found underestimates by up to 33%. The restaurants respond that not all dishes can be prepared at all the restaurants the same way. Okay….

I worked for a very small restaurant chain very briefly a few years ago. This place prided itself on being fast, relatively inexpensive and healthy. They posted calorie content before it was the law. But they had arrived at their numbers using software that they had downloaded off the internet– not quite food science and certainly not consumer friendly. When customers started to question the numbers, ownership decided that it was time to send out the food and get accurate readings. But then they found that food testing labs can be difficult to work with and extremely expensive. Ownership didn’t like the numbers that were coming back in and, due to some numbers that were obviously inaccurate (including sodium levels in a salt free dish) decided that the labs should be scrapped. When last I checked, they were using the internet numbers. Scripps can send out one or two dishes for an investigative piece, but for the restaurant to send out the entire menu and get quality, accurate numbers is simply not cost effective.

So where does that leave the us, the consumers? Screwed. We feel that we are so responsible by looking at the calorie contents and making better decisions but then we find out that even those better decisions may be poor. And these little inconsistencies of 50 calories here and 100 calories there can lead to carrying additional weight over the course of a week or a month. The most responsible thing we can do is…….

…..avoid the fast food restaurants altogether. I know sometimes it’s impossible to avoid them– trust me, I just got in off a big business trip and there are many places where the options are few and far between. But we have to become aware of eating strategies. Fast food is fast food is fast food. And if you are forced into making the best possible choice in a bad situation, then be aware that you may have to take a little more time to figure out when and where you are going to eat.

In the meantime, we can only hope that someone somewhere is thinking about enforcing some sort of quality control on the posting. Getting restaurants to post them was the first victory. Now we need to insure that the numbers are accurate.