Yes, you know it’s best for your health and weight management to prepare your own meals. When you do, you have far more control over food quality, calories and nutrition.
But sometimes you just don’t feel like preparing another meal, or you just want get out of the house, so you go to a restaurant.
Fortunately, many restaurants, particularly fast food and chain restaurants, now post nutritional information on their websites. It means that, before you head out, you can find a restaurant that offers healthier options so you won’t stray too far from your weight management plan.
Unfortunately, while nutritional information is more available, it’s not always easy to find and it’s difficult to compare one restaurant to another.
That’s because, unlike the packaged food you buy in the grocery, there’s no standard format for nutritional disclosure on restaurant food.
The following random review underlines the inconsistency of nutritional information from one restaurant to another.
McDonald’s
Admirably, “Food Quality” is the second choice on McD’s website navigation. But you need to make three clicks, on links that are not clear about where they lead, to get to their “Nutrition Facts” PDF document.
(In most cases, a “PDF” document is simply a printed document that has been formatted to display on a website. It’s a shortcut versus actually putting the information itself on the site)
Boston Pizza
While there’s a “Nutrition” link on BP’s homepage, you must scroll down to find it. Two clicks later, you get to a “Nutritional Information” PDF that’s difficult to read, even on a 23” high resolution computer monitor.
Milestones Bar & Grill
Yes! Someone out there wants to make it easy for you to know exactly what you are eating. While the “nutritional Information” link is at the bottom of the page, you don’t have to scroll to find it. When you do, you are one click away from an easy to use, easy to read web application that lets you choose your menu item and quickly see a variety of nutritional information.
Rosewater Supper Club, Toronto
We found no nutritional information on the Rosewater website.