Following a routine doctor's appointment this morning, my mother wanted to go to IHOP and eat. Okay, fine. Of all the restaurants I've been to of that quick coffee shop variety (Norm's, Denny's, Bob Evans, etc.) IHOP has always struck me as about the best or at least not the worst. It is not, however, renowned as a great place to eat healthy. I can't go past one without recalling Lewis Black's line about how when you go into an IHOP, no matter how much you weigh, you will always see a customer who weighs 350 pounds more than you do.
Everyone there was very nice and my mother enjoyed her French Toast and Sausage. I had the Senior Pot Roast Plate (you have to be 55 or over and I am) which consisted of pot roast, corn, mashed potatoes and a piece of garlic bread about the size of poker chip. The menu said it contained 660 calories and while I didn't pick it primarily for that reason, it did seem to be about my best option, calorie-wise, given how many other things there I can't eat due to food allergies or just plain don't like. It was pleasantly edible, which is about the best you dare expect in a place like that.
I knew it had 660 calories because the menu said so. Every item on the menu had its calorie count listed, and while I've noticed that before on other menus, I don't recall seeing the counts so prominently displayed…and in a restaurant where I don't think people go, looking for a low-cal meal.
And I got to wondering…wondering if, since they started giving us that information before we order, buying patterns have changed. Are they selling less of the high-calorie items and more of the lower ones? I'm guessing it's not working the other way but maybe it hasn't changed at all. Are people ordering less of the Big Country Breakfast because they now see it has 1790 calories…and if you add in the Chicken Fried Steak option and a large orange juice, you bring it up to 2680? I'm curious. If you see an article anywhere about how divulging nutritional info has or has not changed the ordering traits in chain restaurants, would you point me towards it?
Another thing I ponder: They say the meal I had was 660 calories. I assume that's based on an average serving but there must be some fluctuation. The chef doesn't scoop exactly the same number of kernels of corn onto each plate. The size of a scoop of mashed taters can vary a bit and so on. It would not horrify me nor would I call a cop if I learned that what I was served today would have meant 680 calories if I'd eaten it all…or 690. What's the margin of error on something like this?
There's a story you may have heard about a soda fountain somewhere that used to advertise that it had developed a special formula for milk shakes. Theirs was a clone (in size and taste) of the 32 ounce Chocolate Milk Shake served at Baskin-Robbins…but the Baskin-Robbins one contains 1100 calories and theirs contained 250. When people found out that it really did taste pretty much the same, they flooded this soda fountain with business. This went on until someone ratted or someone did a nutritional analysis or…well, it turned out the soda fountain was simply lying. Their shakes contained just as many calories as Baskin-Robbins if not more. The owner was arrested…or so the tale goes. I have no idea if this actually happened.
But what I want to know is how much can an advertised calorie count be off? By 2%? 5%? How far off can they be and still be considered basically accurate? Is there some law that governs this? Someone reading this will know.