--- title: 92% of Restaurant Meals Have Too Many Calories: Study description: Think fast food is bad for you? Your local Italian spot might be worse canonical: https://time.com/4187120/restaurant-meals-fast-food-calories/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-01-20T18:54:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:56:29.226Z article:section: Health og:title: 92% of Restaurant Meals Have Too Many Calories: Study og:description: Think fast food is bad for you? Your local Italian spot might be worse og:url: https://time.com/4187120/restaurant-meals-fast-food-calories/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt302fe7244c69fab3/698781512dce0139609ddc71/time-50-healthiest-foods-salmon.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: healthiest foods, health food, diet, nutrition, time.com stock, salmon, fish, protein og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 92% of Restaurant Meals Have Too Many Calories: Study twitter:description: Think fast food is bad for you? Your local Italian spot might be worse twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt302fe7244c69fab3/698781512dce0139609ddc71/time-50-healthiest-foods-salmon.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 92% of Restaurant Meals Have Too Many Calories: Study > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Our food. Your questions. What are McDonald’s fries made of? [Watch (HLS stream): Our food. Your questions. What are McDonald’s fries made of?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/nGOOAY0j.m3u8) (5:05)  _Published 2015-01-20. Our food. Your questions. What are McDonald’s fries made of?_  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jan 20, 2016 6:54 PM UTC  Danny Kim for TIME  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jan 20, 2016 6:54 PM UTC It’s easy to blame fast food for making Americans fat, since the extreme calorie counts are posted as proof right on the menu. But restaurants too small to be required to report calories and nutrition information often get a pass. There’s no way your favorite Italian restaurant can be worse for you than a drive-thru—right? Wrong, suggests a new [study](http://www.andjrnl.org/article/S2212-2672%2815%2901736-0/abstract) published in the _Journal of the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics_, which joins other recent research finding that [restaurant food is as unhealthy as the fast kind](http://time.com/3962796/restaurant-calories-fast-food/). “The places that don’t report calories are just as bad—you really don’t know what you’re eating,” says the paper’s senior author Susan Roberts, director of the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. Indeed, 92% of meals from large-chain and local restaurants have more calories than is recommended for the average person, the authors conclude. In an unappetizing experiment, the researchers ordered takeout from 123 restaurants in Boston, San Francisco and Little Rock, Ark.—which they then took to a lab, froze in bags and shipped to Boston. There, researchers blended up the meals, freeze-dried them, pulverized them into a powder and analyzed their calorie contents. **MORE**: [34% Of Kids Eat Fast Food On A Given Day](http://www.newsweek.com/ebola-vaccine-merck-gavi-5-million-417774) “We found what we were expecting, which is that portion sizes are obscene,” says Roberts. Some meals exceeded the calories recommended for a whole day. On average, these restaurant meals contained 1,205 calories—about half of a person’s typical daily recommendations. In all, 92% of the meals gave a typical eater more energy than they need at a single meal (570 calories, which the researchers used as a benchmark for typical energy requirements.) And there was little difference between the calorie counts of food at chain and non-chain restaurants. The researchers sampled diverse fare, including American, Thai, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Greek, Indian, Japanese and Vietnamese. But the most caloric were American, Chinese and Italian meals, which averaged 1,495 calories each. **MORE**: [7 Restaurant Meals That Are Way Saltier Than You Think](http://time.com/4130878/salt-sodium-fast-food/) Just knowing that a big platter of beef tacos has a lot of calories won’t help if it’s steaming right in front of you, the authors contend. “People blame themselves and say they don’t have enough willpower,” Roberts says. “It has nothing to do with willpower and everything to do with biology.” When the tacos arrive at the table, you have an “overwhelming neurological response,” she says: blood glucose drops as a signal for hunger and stomach muscles relax to make room for the feast. “Our biology is designed to make us eat when there’s food there,” she says. “I don’t think anybody should feel bad that they get weak when there’s an excessive portion in front of them, because the problem is the excessive portion, not them.” That’s why requiring all restaurants to post calorie counts won’t solve the problem, the authors say. Their solution: require restaurants to let people order food in half portions or one-third portions, and price it proportionally. “I would eat out 10 times as much if I could order a half or a third of whatever I want, instead of being left with the miserable healthy options, which are low in calories but not as interesting either,” Roberts says. Other approaches have tried to nudge people towards the healthier options on a menu, with [mixed](http://time.com/3738352/san-francisco-soda-advertisements/) [success](http://time.com/4168356/mexico-sugar-drink-soda-tax/). The authors know their proposed policy—which is hard to find at restaurants today—wouldn’t be easy on everyone. “Restaurants would hate it, but they would adapt by charging more for their portions or reducing portion size,” Roberts says. “Customers would love it, and it would take away the current incentive to make everything obscenely large.” By letting people choose how much they’re served, the authors say, they can eat less when they eat out without even trying. ## Transcript After graduating college I worked a lot of late nights as an engineer. And when I'd get out of work the only thing that was open was McDonald's. My favorite thing was the fries. But, the thing is, I stopped eating them. I felt guilty about eating their food. So that's why when they asked me to help you find answers I was little skeptical at first. But then I thought. Maybe this is a chance to get to the truth. Now, as an engineer I normally take a bunch of components and put them to gether to form a machine. Any machine can be deconstructed. And by looking at the assembly process in reverse, you can get a better idea of how it's made. And that's what I'm gonna do with McDonald's french fries. I'm gonna reverse engineer the whole process. I'll start with the fully finished fry, and in the end, hopefully. I'll have a potato that came straight out of the ground. So Coco, Ive been asked by people, " Are the fries even made out of potatoes ?" " Are they ground up and mashed into the fries shape ?". Sure, that is why I am glad you are here today. We are going to take you through the whole process so we can make sure you have your answers. Ok, so from the very end, all the way back to the beginning Yes. We are at the end of the freezer tunnel. Now I know what you are thinking. These look like potatoes, but are they really potatoes? Let's go check out the rest of the process. All right. So this whole thing is the freezer tunnel. Yes, it's about 50 yards in length. So the fries go in unfrozen, they come out . >> Frozen. What about me. What if I went in one side and came out the other? It would turn you a Grantcicle. [ LAUGH ]. SO what's before freezing. So these are actually cooked. Yeah they're partially frying and then the final preparation is done at the restaurant. WHy do you partially fry them. Well we want to make sure we get that crisp outer shell. Yes, I like that part. Yeah. So before they're partially fried what happens? This is the ingredient dip where we control the color and we're adding dextrose, a natural sugar to make sure we get a consistent color no matter what time of the year it is. Also, a sodium acid pyrophosphate. What is that? That's gonna make sure that we control the grain after freezing. So this is all about maintaining. Consistency all throughout this process. Yes. It's no wonder that the fries always taste the same. They always taste really good. Well let's keep going back. All right Coco so here's a big one. Now, I've been asked by people to show them the machine where you take the mashed up potato goo and you inject it into these molds in order to make the perfect french fries . >> They don't do that here. Behind us you can see whole potatoes coming at us . >> Yes, and I see this thing that, that looks like a cannon . >> It works similar to a cannon. We're lining up the potatoes in a tube with high pressure water. And shooting them through a water knife here. It's precision cutting. What? Check that out. This is crazy. How fast do they fire through here? 60 to 70 miles per hour. So Coco. Where does the ammo for the potato gun come from? Let's go find out. So these are all the potatoes coming in. I think some of these are huge. That one's as big as my forearm. Are you using GMO potatoes? No. We don't use GMO potatoes for McDonald's fries. But we do use different varieties. So we have russet, burbanks and umatillas. Potatoes are just like people. They come in different shapes and sizes. [ LAUGH ] And they're all beautiful. They're all beautiful. So I've been all through this factory and I've seen the potatoes come off the trucks. I got one final question, where does this come from? So all around us, under these vines, we'll find what makes Mac fries. All right. Clear the vines away, start digging. Am I doing good? [ LAUGH ] You're doing well. It's like an Easter egg hunt. > [ LAUGH ] Oh, this is like the worst Easter egg ever. Oh, look. This is it, right? See? A real potato. This is where it all begins. So you wanted to know McDonald's fries come from, or if they're even made out of potatoes. So I went to. I went backwards through the whole process, saw exactly how they're made and traced it all the way back to here, to this potato. Pretty simple. I know you have questions. I have questions, too. 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