Quick, how many calories was in that large fries, milkshake, and jumbo-sized cheeseburger?
Well, unless you looked up the answer at a fast-food nutrition facts, chances are you're wrong.
People are notorious for underestimating the caloric content of what they eat, and a new study supports this. Apparently, with smaller-sized portions, people tend to be more accurate, but with larger portions they are less accurate, often off by hundreds of calories. Even with a smaller error with the smaller portions, the estimation can still be a problem.
The study, published in the Annals of Interal Medecine, showed that people estimate that a small fast food meal contains roughly 100 calories LESS than it actually does. Why am I making a point of this? Because some research suggests that eating as little as 100 calories too much per day can influence your bottom..er..line.
Now, as the size of the meal increases, so does the amount of error people have regarding caloric content of a meal. I'm not surprised. Fast food comes in dense little packages. They are the dwarf stars and black holes in our diets. I'm also not convinced that any human was ever meant to look at an apple and think "60-80 calories" or a large order of chili cheese fries and think "1800 calories, hmm, better skip dinner".
There are tools online and in many restaurants to help you do the math. Arm yourself. If you're going to McFood's for lunch, take a minute to look up what you intend to order. You're not fooling me when you say it's too hard or you want to be spontaneous when you eat out. Truth is you know you order the same 4 or 5 items when you go out. Make it a point to know what's in your meal. I'm not saying you can't eat what you want, I'm just wanting you to know what you're eating.
Oh, and that biggie meal I mentioned above?
A Wendy's Classic triple with Cheese, a biggie fries and a chocolate frosty (medium) will set you back...
1990 calories and 98 grams of fat.
Don't believe me, do the math yourself:
Wendy's
McDonald's
Burger King ** This site is poorly designed to let you find nutrition info, you have to enter Nutrition Facts into the search box.** Yeah, I think bad design stinks too. Too bad I can't have it my way.