My Thoughts: Restaurants and Their Calories Lists.

Something I want to try and do a bit more this year is to post my thoughts on different food and diet related subjects. I have a lot of thoughts about certain food subjects and don't have very many other outlets to share them (My mom has heard it enough), so why not share it here.

The information I will be talking about is my own personal opinion and it is not my intentions to offend anyone with my comments.

Tonight I wanted to talk about something I've seen a lot of lately: restaurants offering special, low-calorie, portions of their menus. Maybe you've seen or heard of some of these?

Applebee's Pub- menu, including whole grains and light sauce

TGI Friday's Cut back menu

Olive Garden trying to go light.

Normally, I would be really happy that so many restaurants are making strides in helping people stick to their diets and be more conscious of their food decisions, but lately I've been thinking otherwise. 

If you know me well enough, you know that I am a bit of an advocate for the idea of "ingredients over calories". Because of this, I find the fact that so many restaurants are required to post calories a bit disturbing and frustrating. If I'm eating out, I would rather NOT know that I ingesting 1000 calories with my appetizer.  

But back to my main concern. When a restaurant adds a special "light" menu, it's implying that the rest of their menu is unhealthy, caloric, and simply dangerous. It's making people (or I hope it is) feel guilty for picking something that isn't on this menu. Or for picking something without the nutrition info posted. And when a menu only has calorie info in certain areas, I see it as their way of hiding the whole truth about their food from consumers. 

A great example is an experience I had this past summer when I was counting calories (which for the record, I never want to do again). My family visiting Chili's and I was debating between fish off the light menu and a flatbread off the regular menu. The fish (and everything on the light menu) had calorie info, while the flatbread did not. Luckily I was able to get on my sister's smart phone and find the info online. I'm glad I did,because even though the flatbread had "healthy" ingredients on top, it clocked in at almost 1,000 calories. I ordered the fish...

I think that we need to stop worrying about calories and start worrying about what is actually in our food and how it's prepared. I bet the quinoa and whole grains in that dish aren't even as nutritious as if you made them at home. Don't get me wrong, it's great that places like Applebee's are offering whole grains and quinoa, but I think that these ingredients should be staples on their entire menu, not just shoved in a corner of a page. If such ingredients were to become staples on menus, I believe that more people would accept them and we could finally start the transition to eating healthy, natural foods on a regular basis. 

At the end of the day, we all feel the way we feel about our food and make our own decisions. But for me, I think I'm going to just avoid these restaurants as much as I can. If I can't pick something off the menu without wondering why they don't have the numbers with them, it's not worth my time.

~Lisa