Super Scary News: Misinterpreting Calories

Researchers at Tufts University recently analyzed 269 food items from 42 national sit-down and fast-food restaurant chains, and they found that nearly 20 percent of samples contained 100 or more calories than reported by the restaurants.

Foods with the greatest differences calorie-wise: soups and (EEK!) salads. Researchers believe larger portion sizes and extra dressing as the factors that inflated the calories.

An extra 100 calories or more leads to a possible weight gain of 11 to 33 pounds per year!!

SOME 'LOW-LIGHTS' FROM THE STUDY:
A zuppa toscana soup from Olive Garden listed at 191 calories --- actual calories: 391. Outback Steakhouse's classic blue cheese wedge side salad is marked as 376 calories --- lab found 1,035 calories in the "portion."
On the Border Mexican Grill and Cantina measures chips and salsa at 451 calories --- after 3 tests the sides came in at 1,000 calories every time.

SOME 'HIGH-LIGHTS':
Some dishes actually had LOWER calorie counts than listed counts
A Sonic cheeseburger with mayonnaise and jalapeños listed at 799 calories, had only 614 calories.
Lemon pepper shrimp from P.F. Chang's came out with just 264 calories, not the 583 on the menu.

If it doesn't sound or look healthy, it probably isn't (even if its calorie counts reads pretty low). By the way, restaurant calorie counts are not the only ones. Packaged foods with calorie counts (yes that includes the Entemann's donuts you scarf down at night) are not always what they're listed as.

Super U's Bottom Line: Most things are too good to be true...that includes the sundae.