So the wife and I went out to a restaurant last night and as I was perusing the menu I noticed that they had nice little “Low Carb” and “Low Fat” stickers next to some of the entrees. Great, I thought. The sticker doesn’t give any specifics, but it’s a nice way to give me the heads up on the nutritional “values”. When the waitress comes over to take our order, I asked her if she had a nutritional guide for the menu. Her response was amazing, “Oh no, that’s online, we don’t have it here at the restaurant.” She was basically telling me that if I wanted to time things out with my bolus, that I would have to decide what I wanted to eat before I left the house. And yes, I forgot my little Carb Counting book at home.
Now, there’s another place that the wife and I like to frequent (rhymes with Pizzeria Uno) and they have a great thing in their lobby. While you’re waiting for that coaster-looking thing to vibrate, there’s a touch-screen menu that lets you know of the nutritional value, in some nice detail too.
Have you ever run into a situation like that, where the staff were minimally helpful in providing you with nutritional info?
Of course. Most of the time they know nothing. Applebees advertises in Weight Watchers magazine that they have several menu items where the points are calculated. I was there about a month ago and was told that the info was on a “different” menu, of which they had none.
Applebee’s is the worst! They don’t have their nutritional info (except for the Weight Watchers items) in the restaurant, online, or by phone…so I’m thinking their food must be much more unhealthy than other places.
A couple weeks ago, we went to UNO’s for lunch, and I was so pleasantly surprised with that touch screen. It’s great having that nutritional information. I even went to the manager and told him how much we appreciated having that access to the info., and that it helped us out a great deal. He said he would pass it along to his manager, and so on. I hope more restaurants will catch on to this trend. (I heard some states are trying to make it the law to provide it)
every time i go out to dinner with my friends now, i look up the resturaunt where we are going and try to figure out what to eat before i get there. it’s such a pain to do, but i guess oh well. do what must be done.
Panera has good detailed info, but most of it is in a binder that they keep behind the register. I like to mess with them and ask them to look up the values for like 5 or 6 items, while the line fidgets behind me. You’d thing they’d just hand me the binder
The carb counts on that restaurant food are LIES! This has been discussed to death on the old alt.support.diet.low-carb newsgroup. So you probably are better off without them.
They put huge amounts of sugar alcohol and other substances into the foods that they claim have “no carbs” but which will definitely raise blood sugars. Plus the portion sizes don’t match what they give you.
All you can do is learn as much as you can about portion sizes at home weighing stuff with a food scale, and use software like LifeForm to get the carb count of recipes, and then do your best to estimate portion size and chose foods you KNOW are lower carb
like meat and veg, and use a bit less insulin than your estimate to be safe.
The chain restaurants put carbs in things YOU’D never imagine. Pancake batter in the omelettes, flour in the taco filling, huge amounts of sugar in salad dressing that don’t taste sweet, And much more flour in the supposed “low carb” wraps than they admit to.
Eating out is tough when you really have to get it right.
I try to plan ahead, just recently I couldn’t find anything for Rainforest cafe. The chef emailed me and said he didn’t know the carb counts-but he can get us fruit rolls eyes We kind of guestimate, like recently we went to a Mexican restaurant and they had cheese quesadillas (my toddler is the one with type 1) so I knew how much carbs were in that tortilla since quesadillas are a usual food for him!
Thought I was going to play it safe with the Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad…it came out like a Grilled Chicken Caesar Soup! Every piece of lettuce was swimming in dressing. Shoulda gotten it on the side…
All the time! Zaxby’s is the worst. No nutritional info in the restaurant or online. Nowhere to be found. I really believe these places don’t want us to know how bad their food really is for us.
Panera has some of the scariest high carb counts of anywhere I’ve ever eaten. Over 100 gm in the Cobblestone and their soups are extremely high carb, even ones like cheese that shouldn’t be.
The calorie and carb count in their sandwiches is extreme too–which is sad because people eat there thinking it is healthy. But you can easily pack away 2,000 calories at lunch there with just a soup, sandwich and dessert.
I’m usually a complete failure when it comes to eating out and guessing carbs. So few restaurants provide the info. It’s like my b.g. control is directly correlated to how often I ate out that week. Today however, I had a blackened salmon salad and had no problem. I was kind of worried the roasted red pepper dressing was going to be loaded with sugar, but it wasn’t as far as I could tell. Yay.
I went to Boston Market recently and asked about the nutritional content of the side dishes. One of the workers came over and asked if I wanted to know carb counts. She was on a low carb diet herself and was very helpful! According to the info sheet the creamed spinach only had 12g. It was a good sized serving but must have been correct because I didn’t have a high spike afterwards.
I went to Applebees last Thursday evening. I looked at their Weight Watcher’s menu items, but I was not impressed. I did note that most of the other entrees on the menu was accompanied by rice, pasta, or french fries. Not to mention that the large servings we received were no way close to the size of a normal serving. I did notice that most (if not all) of the serving staff were slim and trim, and that the majority of the customers were bulging around their middles. It was quite a contrast. The staff must have found a healthier place to eat.
I was always amazed at the differences in sugar content between sauces and glazes in Chinese food. Two sauces that appear to have very similar texture and sweetness might have completely different carb content, and the recipes vary ridiculously between restaurants. That and the GI of white rice have me avoiding Asian food altogether - kind of a bummer, but it beats the huge BG swings that come with eating it.
I went to a New York Pizza restaurant a few months after I was diagnosed. I was excited to see they had a “Low Carb” section.
HA!
My order turned out to be chicken soaked in marinara sauce with melted mozzarella cheese. The menu’s description was much more appealing than the dish turned out to be. I wanted to cry!
My finance (he’s not diabetic just a life long low carber) and I have had some hits and misses with carb counting and eating out, totally bad places end up being Fridays, Olive Garden (unless you get the salmon or the steak and skip everything good like the bread sticks), Applebees, Panera, Boston’s, and just about every typical fast food joint. But we have found a lot of goodies. Steakhouses (longhorns, Outback etc) have lean cuts a of meat lots of fresh ingredients (everything is made there so you can ask and specify how you would like things prepared), I typically have a great meal there and not end up with a high or consuming massive amounts of calories, Escendidos or On the Border are good too if you half your amount of tortia and skip the chips with the cheese and sour cream on the side, Boston market is great… theres a lot of options there if you can resist the potatoes and corn bread. If in doubt the fiance and I do a bit of cross referencing between Calorie King and South Beach eating out guide (we leave them in the car) it helps us make healthy choices even if we’re stuck at one of the not so great places.
