Are Restaurants Lying to You?

It sucks when a restaurant messes up your order—but it’s even worse if they screw up the calorie counts. And they do that a lot, it turns out: Around one-fifth of the food chain menu items tested by researchers had 100 calories more than they’re supposed to, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

To test the accuracy of food chains, study author Susan B. Roberts, Ph.D., ordered 269 menu items from the fast food and sit-down restaurants in three different states. Then they took the foods back to a lab and crunched the numbers themselves.

One of the most surprising findings was that the foods that often had low-calorie counts (like soups and salads) were the ones with the most mistakes.

In addition, sit-down restaurants are more likely than fast-food joints to get the numbers wrong.

Although Roberts and her colleagues don’t know why some calorie counts differed so much, they suspect it’s simply due to human error. For example, fast food items are portioned out in factories, so they’re more likely to have the same calorie counts as expected. But in sit-down restaurants, the cooks tend to portion out the food on the spot; if they’re a bit heavy-handed with the oil or salad dressing, it could make a big difference.

On the positive side, Roberts did find that 80 percent of the food items they sampled were correct. She adds that if you must eat out, don’t rely on numbers that look too good to be true. (Our solution: Check out your restaurant at the Eat This, Not That website and decide what to order before you walk in the door.)

Of course, not all foods disguise how many calories they contain. Some are hiding in plain sight. Click here for the 10 Worst Fast Food Meals in America.

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