Calorie counts on menus can make us guilty enough to pass off the dish we really want in favor of something purportedly healthier.
But mulling over the numbers can be a waste of time, as restaurant dishes often contain more than double the calories listed on menus, according to tests.
Rules introduced last year forced food outlets to list the number of calories in their meals on their menus.
But an experiment by The Sunday Times conducted with the University of Greenwich’s food testing lab has revealed that calorie counts on menus are often wildly inaccurate.
In the experiment, 20 samples of food were purchased from ten popular restaurant chains in the UK, including Pizza Express, Dishoom, Leon and Las Iguanas. The food was then tested in the laboratory.
Thinking about the numbers can be a waste of time, as restaurant dishes often contain more than double the calories listed on menus, according to tests
It found that only half of the dishes fell within the 20 percent “accepted margin” between actual and stated calories.
Five of the samples had significantly more calories than stated, while five were significantly lower. Dishoom’s “roomali roti,” a soft flatbread, had 727 calories — more than three times the listed 236 calories.
A las Iguanas nachos dish had 1,156 calories, despite the menu listing only 576.
Dr. Nazanin Zand, an associate professor of food and nutrition at the University of Greenwich, said: “Consumers should use the nutritional information on the menu as rough estimates, rather than absolute values.”
Dishoom said, “As a restaurant with chefs doing things by hand, there is some variation in portioning.”
Las Iguanas said the “only logical explanation” was that the portion was significantly larger than the usual size.
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