
At Chipotle, How Many Calories Do People Really Eat? - knowtheory
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/17/upshot/what-do-people-actually-order-at-chipotle.html?abt=0002&abg=0&_r=0
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skywhopper
A few points to balance this out:

1\. Many people don't finish what they order in one meal. I can generally get
two meals out of a Chipotle burrito. Many do, of course, but that can't be
sussed out of the data they used. In addition, the chips sides are sized to
share, and I'd wager that most people who order those do share with someone
else.

2\. It's a mistaken assumption that one meal ought to be only 1/3 of your
daily calorie intake. Most of the meals came in around 1000 calories, but I
also bet that for most people, this is their largest meal of the day.

3\. The recommended maximum sodium intake of 2.4g is probably too low based on
many recent studies. Sodium intake is only a significant risk for a very small
handful of the population, and in fact low sodium intake is as risky if not
more risky, and there's good evidence that 2.4g/day is on the low end of long-
term positive health outcomes.

Given the freshness and quality of the ingredients at Chipotle, and the
simplicity and openness with which the food is prepared, focusing on calorie
and sodium counts is an incomplete way to assess the healthiness of the food.
I guarantee that a meal with fewer calories from McDonalds or in a
microwaveable box is going to be overall far less healthy.

~~~
edgyswingset
> I'd wager that most people who order those do share with someone else.

I live in a college town and this is definitely not the case here. Most people
buy them for themselves. Items are also typically eaten for one meal, but it's
college students so that's to be expected.

> It's a mistaken assumption that one meal ought to be only 1/3 of your daily
> calorie intake

I think what they're getting at is what you're also making a point about; that
it doesn't necessarily have to be eaten in one setting. The point of lower
calories is is gives you more options with what you can eat without gaining
weight (assuming you're not on a weight-gain program for power lifting).
What's deceiving is that, while Chipotle offers the full ranges of calories
for their food, they don't mention that if you go through with all the things
they offer then you usually end up in the 1000+ range. I wouldn't doubt if
there are many people downing 1000+ calories thinking that they're closer to
600.

> focusing on calorie and sodium counts is an incomplete way to assess the
> healthiness of the food

This is correct, but to a point. An excess of calories, unless offset by
regular exercise, leads to weight gain, which is collectively unhealthy for
our society. There's obviously much more to it (an obese person who can run a
mile is considered healthier than a skinny person who can't for example), but
that's failing to see the bigger picture. The point is, people in developed
countries are shoving more calories into themselves than they need, and places
like Chipotle aren't a haven of good health - they're also part of the
problem.

~~~
CPLX
> an obese person who can run a mile is considered healthier than a skinny
> person who can't for example

Do you have a link or data to support that idea? Genuinely curious, as that
doesn't sound right to me.

~~~
lostcolony
I don't want to look up a source offhand, especially since it would require
some reading between the lines, but, 56% of NFL players are obese (97% are
overweight), according to BMI guidelines. Going on the same "that doesn't
sound right" criteria, saying they're less healthy than a skinny, sedentary
person just because they have more muscle (and possibly more fat, but after
all, BMI doesn't distinguish) doesn't sound right to me.

~~~
CPLX
> 56% of NFL players are obese... Going on the same "that doesn't sound right"
> criteria, saying they're less healthy than a skinny, sedentary person just
> because they have more muscle (and possibly more fat, but after all, BMI
> doesn't distinguish) doesn't sound right to me.

It doesn't sound right to you because it isn't correct. NFL players, as a
general rule, are not obese. Obesity is an excess of fat, by both the
colloquial and medical definitions. BMI is an _indication_ of obesity, which
is not the same as a definition of same.

[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obesity](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/obesity)

: a condition characterized by the excessive accumulation and storage of fat
in the body

Medical Definition of OBESITY

: a condition that is characterized by excessive accumulation and storage of
fat in the body and that in an adult is typically indicated by a body mass
index of 30 or greater

~~~
lostcolony
[http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=16...](http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=160844)

"STANDARD DEFINITIONS OF OBESITY, which are based on height and weight, may
not apply to former National Football League players and other groups with
greater muscle mass, according to a new study"

Emphasis mine.

From your own quotation, "typically indicated by a body mass index of 30 or
greater"

Body mass index. BMI. BMI being height and weight. A la
[http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmic...](http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm)

Ergo, a standard definition of obesity is calculated by height and weight,
deemed 'BMI', which does not take muscle mass into account. Which is what my
post states. BMI would state they're obese, and that says little about their
actual health.

~~~
CPLX
That's not correct.

Obesity IS an excess of fat

Obesity IS INDICATED BY a high BMI

What that means is that when you see a high BMI there's a really good chance
you're seeing obesity. But since obesity is defined as excess fat, the unusual
cases where BMI doesn't correlate are exceptions to a rule. It should not
surprise that professional athletes have bodies that are unusual and
exceptional.

~~~
lostcolony
Have you ignored the context?

"an obese person who can run a mile is considered healthier than a skinny
person who can't for example Do you have a link or data to support that idea?
Genuinely curious, as that doesn't sound right to me."

to which I replied

"56% of NFL players are obese (97% are overweight), according to BMI
guidelines."

What exactly have you said that disagrees with that? I -agree- that ~real~
obesity, as is generally referred to, is based on fat percentage; I never said
otherwise. What I said, very explicitly, was that an NFL who is considered
obese ACCORDING TO BMI GUIDELINES (which are used very frequently by layman
and health official alike when discussing nutrition and exercise) is actually
pretty healthy; the original post questioned whether someone could be obese,
able to run a mile, and still be healthier than someone who is skinny but not
physically fit enough to run a mile. I addressed that with the qualifier of
'according to BMI' included.

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JoelSutherland
Click around with this nice tool:
[http://www.chipotlefan.com/index.php?id=nutrition_calculator](http://www.chipotlefan.com/index.php?id=nutrition_calculator)

Skip the tortilla, sour cream and chips and you've just saved 980 calories.
Without those it's _hard_ to create a meal that has a calorie issue. Aside
from the sodium, Chipotle is darn healthy.

~~~
mason55
The thing that lets people create 1200 calorie monstrosities is what makes
Chipotle my favorite fast food chain. No matter whether I'm trying to add or
cut weight I always know that I can tailor a Chipotle meal exactly to my
caloric & macronutrient needs. Both from the fact that the food is easy to
customize as well as the fat that they have good calorie and macronutrient
breakdowns of each ingredients.

Subway, for example, makes it tough to find info on individual ingredients.
Some things need to be backed out by comparing, say, a roast beef sub vs a
veggie sub to determine the stats on the roast beef individually so that you
know what you're getting if you do double roast beef.

~~~
jonesdc
You can find individual items as listed on pages 2 & 3 of this pdf:

[https://www.subway.com/Nutrition/Files/NutritionValues.pdf](https://www.subway.com/Nutrition/Files/NutritionValues.pdf)

Edit: Actually, on the same Chipotlefan link, there is a similar link for
Subway. [http://www.nutritionix.com/subway/nutrition-
calculator](http://www.nutritionix.com/subway/nutrition-calculator)

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DontBeADick
> The distributions of two other metrics of a meal’s health — salt and
> saturated fat

Did I accidentally fall into a time machine and end up in the 1980s?

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jusben1369
I lost interest in Chipotle pretty quickly and had begun labelling it
Chipsaltle when family or friends wanted to eat there. So the sodium data was
interesting to me and validated what I felt after eating there (parched a few
hours later)

I'm not for or against fast food. I just think Chipotle has wonderful
marketing and has really tapped into what people _want_ to believe or have. I
want all the conveniences of fast food without feeling like it's unhealthy or
responsible for big agriculture. I don't think it's going to end well.....

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pacofvf
As a Mexican living in Mexico, I really like chipotle, I eat one every time
I'm in the US, they are the greatest mix of American and Mexican food, still I
don't understand why there aren't authentic "Taquerias" (taco shops) in the
US, I haven't met a foreigner that doesn't love tacos from our taquerias that
you can find in every corner in Mexico City. The closest I ever tried was at a
Taco Truck in LA, but that was just one food truck.

~~~
dragonwriter
> still I don't understand why there aren't authentic "Taquerias" (taco shops)
> in the US,

In most of California and the parts of the Southwest I've been to, taquerias
are very common.

> The closest I ever tried was at a Taco Truck in LA, but that was just one
> food truck.

If you were in L.A. and you couldn't find taquerias, you weren't looking very
hard (or you had a bad guide.)

~~~
pacofvf
You are maybe right, when I was in LA I wasn't actively searching for
taquerias, although I ate at couple of them , like I said the most authentic
tacos were the ones from a taco truck.

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blankenship
My wife and I regularly split a burrito bowl, getting extra rice and
beans.Chipotle ends up being one of the few “heathy” places we can eat out for
~$5/person.

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jonheller
No mention of one of the most unhealthy components of the meal, carbohydrates?
I think the average burrito clocks in at around 120 carbs

~~~
jemacniddle
Carbohydrates are most certainly not 'unhealthy'. Care to cite any sources?

~~~
johnward
Carbohydrates are the most likely to cause an insulin response which causes
weight gain. I'm not saying they are "unhealthy" but I think we, in the US,
eat unhealthy amounts particularly refined sugars.

~~~
jemacniddle
Protein can also be fairly insulinogenic.

~~~
perardi
Protein can be more insulinogenic than carbohydrates. Whey produces a huge
insulin spike relative to a fibrous fruit.

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dlevine
My question has always been how accurate these calorie counts are. I always
get a burrito bowl with no sour cream, which allegedly comes out to 655
calories. But I'm not entirely sure how accurate that is - I usually have to
tell the person "a little cheese," because when I don't, they often put a
mountain of cheese atop the bowl (probably an extra 100 calories or so).

~~~
kevindalias
This is the most important point here.

For my meals out, I prefer to eat at restaurants which publish nutrition
information, but I'm under no illusions that these values are anything more
than rough guidance. The core of the problem is in employee training. I find
that even restaurants which make an effort to publish nutrition info don't
bother to adequately train employees to serve the expected amounts of food.

Your cheese example is a good one. Based solely on anecdotal evidence, I'd
wager most people who order cheese at Chipotle end up being served 1.5-3x the
intended serving size due to generous and unmeasured portions. I love cheese
as much as the next guy, but an extra few hundred unexpected calories adds up
very quickly. This also renders any analysis of nutritional value misleading
if not useless.

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rvvvr
Important rejoinder: [http://www.vox.com/2015/2/17/8051367/obesity-
snacks](http://www.vox.com/2015/2/17/8051367/obesity-snacks)

The underlying issue with overeating isn't large meals, it's snacks. So sure,
Chipotle's meals are big, but that's not the root of the problem.

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bluedino
That huge tortilla has so many empty calories in it. Just like the Subway
health fad. Jared lost weight eating 6" veggie subs without cheese or mayo.
People load up that huge foot long bun with cheese and sauce, an oven roasted
chicken breast sub is 960 calories with mayo and cheese. Add in a soft drink
and a bag of chips and you're triple what Jared would eat.

~~~
wdewind
Describing calories as "empty" is not really a useful way to think about
nutrition. Carbs are not "empty," they are your primary energy source.

In fact, as you point out, Jared lost weight primarily by removing _fats_ from
his diet, not carbs.

~~~
enjo
He removed calories from his diet.

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BallinBige
so much for Chipotle being healthier than Mickey D's.

~~~
ceejayoz
"Healthy" is a lot more involved than calorie count.

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jsmith0295
Why did they have to tear all of these innocent burritos open?
Savages...hopefully they at least let someone eat the remains...

------
kfk
Calories are a very broad way to measure what we need in terms of food. Eating
200-2500 at 50-60% carbs tends to make me fat-ter than eating 3000 at 20%.

I cook most of the food I eat, but I take calories into account very broadly,
more narrowly when I diet.

Just to say, 1000 kcal might be half day worth of your energy needs on paper,
in reality it's much more complex than that. In fact, if you are eating decent
food and keeping fat% at ~30-40, I guarantee you that you will have troubles
eating more than 2500 kcal per day. If you drink lots of soda and crap like
than, then yes, you can manage even 3000. But eating a lot of calories is not
such an easy task as many people think.

Edit: Wow, this generated quite a lot of debate. Just to clarify, I have never
said that you lose wait eating as much as you want, I said I think we should
consider the number of calories more broadly. Use ranges and look into the
weekly intakes too. Check what you eat. Kill all the refined sugars. Kill all
the complex foods. Start cooking. That will help you more than counting kcals
to the gram. It's about how you shift your way of thinking about food. Lots of
food out there is almost poison if eaten regularly, lots of this food is even
labelled as "healthy", again, it cannot be only about kcals, it's _also_ about
kcals.

~~~
jemacniddle
Unless you have just successfully dismantled the second law of thermodynamics,
this is impossible.

~~~
sp332
The comment you replied to only mentions calories input. kfk didn't say that
they were burning the same amount of calories in each scenario.

~~~
vinceguidry
There are very few activities that let you meaningfully adjust your
metabolism, the effective ones are thermogenic in nature. The only one of
these that's at all fun is swimming. I spent all of last year trying to
exercise to lose weight, the only thing that worked was lowering my intake.

People say weightlifting works, but it only helps when you're already
relatively skinny. I know, I tried. You can be strong and fat. People say
running works. It has a small effect but it's nothing to write home about. My
sister runs marathons and still struggles with her weight. The problem is that
exercise is maybe 10% of the picture, whereas intake is the other 90%. It's
easy to fool yourself into thinking you're making progress on your weight
goals by exercising, then throwing it all away on extra snacks. People get
caught up in chasing mushy health goals and forget about the hard empirical
facts.

