Unfortunately to compound the problem I was at P.F. Chang's for dinner tonight with a colleague visiting from California. We had a good meal and talked shop unashamedly. Thanks to the recent change to the law, I was able to make my choice from the menu with the knowledge of the calorie content - everything was fairly shocking, but it could have been worse without the information.I've been tracking my calorie intake and exercise using an app on my phone and I dutifully entered my dinner once I got home. When I called it up, the main dish registered as '1 serving: 272 calories' and the rice added a further 190 calories. Sounds good, but I knew thanks to Albany County that it should have been a number in the 800's.
I assumed that the app had a fault in their data, so I logged onto the restaurant's website, found the nutritional information table and scrolled down - sure enough there was 283 calories (a little more than the app thought, but comparable). I scrolled back up to check the column was really the correct one and applied to a full serving - yes it did.
I was confused, but reassured until something caused me to scan the rest of the columns in the table - and there it was: 'servings per dish'. Sure enough, the dish I had had contained three servings - I'm sure three people share that dish all the time. Not.
So score 1 for Albany County for forcing this place to print accurate information on their menu, and -1 for P.F. Chang's for their attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of people who attempt to find nutritional information via their directly-provided data.
In the end I'm calorie-neutral for the day and planning a swim tomorrow, but first, hopefully, a decent night's sleep.
Have you signed up for your PF Chang's Warrior Card yet? Sounds exciting ;-)
ReplyDeleteA
Good to hear that the App which you were using almost gave you the accurate amount of calories intake.
ReplyDeleteThanks A - it does indeed, but I am not a regular at such places!
ReplyDeleteFitness Freak - well, the app gave me the information in keeping with the website, which was itself rather misleading as it was difficult to tell that a 'serving' was 5 oz and an order/bowl contained three of them (it was impossible to tell from the information supplied by the app). However, I'm squarely blaming P.F. Chang's for this one.