Dining Out, Weighing In - Restaurant Meals Are Higher in Calories

With two out of three Americans overweight today, its getting harder to believe that all this extra fat is a simple problem of self-indulgence or poor personal discipline.

In fact, researchers and clinicians from various sciences say unequivocally that its not. Certainly adults are responsible for what they put in their mouths. But when so many are affected, from all across the American demographic, we have to also look whats going on in our culture at large.

And one thing thats going on is that theres a lot more going out. In 1978, just 18 percent of the calories Americans consumed were eaten away from home. But by 2003, that was up to half.

Why should that even matter? A calorie is a calorie is a calorie, right?

At the bottom line, yes. The trouble is that when we eat out, we simply have much less control over what ends up on our plates, and from there, on our bottom line. That shows up in a variety of ways.

Nutritional research indicates that for almost any given dish that you might choose to prepare at home, when its compared to a restaurant dish of the same name, its often not the same thing at all. So even trying to consciously select what looks like the healthiest choice on the menu might not do you much good.

Restaurants tend to use more oils and fats, more sugar, and more salt in their food preparations. The reason is simple: if the food is yummy, youll come back! But that tends to add up to a lot of extra calories you werent counting on.

And speaking of extras, how about all those extra nibbles: the plates of appetizers, the baskets of warm bread with pots of cool butter, the bonus beverage specials? most families simply dont have all those edible accouterments with regular home meals.

But at a restaurant, your drinks are brought before you even order. You often get bread or rolls to eat during your wait, and appetizers and desserts are helpfully suggested by your server.

Yet those extras can have even more calories than your meals! An order of buffalo wings with blue cheese dressing? Thats a tidy 1,010 calories before dinner. For a fried onion blossom with dip, figure around 2,000. Even a basket of garlic bread is about 800 calories. How many people are sharing those calories at your table?

Then you get to the main attraction, and the major problem with dining outportion size! Restaurant meals are often three to four times larger than a normal serving size.

Even plates, glassware and utensils have grown. Very often, the dinner plate you get in a restaurant would qualify as a platter in any home kitchen, but then, they have to be bigger to accommodate those super servings!

It wouldnt be such an issue if we were better at walking away. An old adage about fitness says that the most important exercise to do is pushbacks, as in, when youve had enough, push back and get up from the table.

But research shows that Americans in general tend to be completers, and many of us were raised to feel a sense of guilt if we left food on our plates. Add that programming to a giant dish of pasta, and suddenly, youre stuffed!

The truth is, no matter how we're raised, or whether we're slim or fat, if more is put in front of us we'll eat more, period. And usually, we're not even particularly aware of it. This has been proven out by study after study, in both the United States and abroad.

And that's not all. The research also shows that as we become accustomed to those mega-sized meals were presented in restaurants, we tend to prepare bigger portions at home, as well. We may not use all the extra oil, salt and sugar that restaurants do, but were certainly having more of our main ingredients, and were eating big and hearty.

The other thing that restaurants have over the home meal is variety. Even the most accommodating home cook typically wont make a different special meal for each member of the family. Again, the nutritional research shows that the more different things you can have, the more youll eat overall.

United States Department of Agriculture studies showed that when offered three varieties of a given food itemsay, sandwiches or cookiespeople would eat more than if they were offered three items of the same variety. Thats part of why those all-you-can-eat buffets are such a caloric catastrophe. Who ever has just a little?

Given the demands of todays busy lifestyles, dining out nowadays is not only a pleasure, but a time-saving survival tool. Restaurants may eventually be required to provide nutritional facts for their meals, but even without hard numbers, awareness of the pitfalls can go a long way toward helping us control those calorie counts.

We just need to think about what were up against when someone else is serving, so that when were eating out, were not taking so much in.

Caroline J. Cederquist, M.D. is a board certified Family Physician and a board certified bariatric physicians (the medical specialty of weight management). Dr. Cederquist is the founder of Bistro MD a home diet delivery program that specializes in low calorie gourmet food that is delivered to your home or office and a practicing bariatric physician.

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