Eating Out? Nutritional Information Sites For Your Favorite Restaurant Foods

Ever wonder what your favorite restaurant foods have in them? I'm not thinking ingredients (although that's a good question too) so much as fat, calories, etc? I know I have, as do most of us who would like to lose some weight. Many states require fast food restaurants to have a poster on the wall or a pamphlet you can take home with the information on it, but how many people actually *read* them? Considering that most people I've seen in fast food restaurants are in a hurry or dealing with errant kids, not many. It's not much different for 'sit-down' restaurants; I'm usually there with friends and not thinking about the food so much as the team trivia game we are playing. If you are in the same boat, you're in luck. I've found a few websites that give us the skinny (pun intended) on the caloric content of various restaurant dishes.

Rather than simply listing restaurants and foods, Chubbygrub.com gives information from the viewpoint of a person who is trying to eat better. It's not that other sites don't do this too, but I appreciate that the webmaster is of the same mind I usually am when I'm on a site like this. You can search by restaurant or by food category; it even has information on sauces and cream cheese spreads! I appreciate that because it doesn't do much good to eat salads to lose weight if the dressing is fatty. The only problem I see is that it doesn't include information on coffee-house drinks, but you can request restaurants or items to be added to the list.

Caloriecount, a service associated with About.com, also gives detailed information on the nutritional content of restaurant foods. Even if it doesn't actually give the restaurant's name (as is often the case for smaller, non-chain restaurants), you can still search by the food category. You can also search for alcoholic beverages, which is something I haven't seen on many 'diet' websites! There are also options to create a profile complete with a food and exercise journal. I have used it in the past and found it very helpful. I believe there is also an app for iPod/iPhone users, and I know that you can obtain food information via text message.

DietFacts.com has a very thorough database that gives nutritional information for nearly every restaurant you can think of...and many you can't. Not only can you find information on restaurant-specific dishes, the site features 'mainstream' foods such as sodas and steak sauces. As I said before, this is good because it's pretty easy to 'ruin' an otherwise-healthy meal by slathering on fatty condiments or chugging empty-calorie drinks. For extra help, DietFacts.com also links to various diet and weight-loss websites.

There are many more websites that let you research the nutritional information for your favorite restaurants, but these are the ones I found most useful. Sites like this take a lot of the 'guesswork' out of making healthy choices when eating out.