
What 2,000 Calories Looks Like - aaronbrethorst
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/22/upshot/what-2000-calories-looks-like.html
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muaddirac
It's pretty interesting to see this in picture form, but it wasn't a big
secret that you could eat a days worth of calories in a single meal in most
chain restaurants.

The comparison to home-cooked at the end is a little ridiculous. A 22oz steak
will be a lot of calories whether you cook it at home or have it at a
restaurant. They intentionally picked healthier options for the home meal, and
always included large sugared drinks or milkshakes with the fast food options.
It would be interesting to see the same article, but comparing each individual
meal at a restaurant with a home-cooked version of the same meal (and I'd
imagine you'd mostly be shaving off a couple hundred calories unless you're
really messing with the ingredients.)

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dack
I agree with you it's a bit misleading - they do make it seem like "home
cooked food" inherently has less calories when it obviously doesn't.

I think the real point they were trying to make was that when you are actually
cooking your food, you are more conscious of what you're eating and therefore
more likely to choose lower calorie/healthier options.

However, I am not sure I really agree with them. I can make a giant plate of
spaghetti at home or eat several peanut butter sandwiches really easily -
burning through 2000 calories without paying attention. And since some
restaurants have calorie counts on their meals anyway - it's pretty easy for
me to choose that if I want to be on a diet.

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army
"It is possible to eat healthier at each chain. You can ... order from the
“Skinnys” menu at Potbelly, which has sandwiches with fewer than 400
calories."

Or you could skip the chips, cookie or drink, or order the regular size (not
the big size). Or have a different sandwich from the Italian, which has the
highest calorie content of all the sandwiches on the menu. It's not rocket
science.

Honestly I expect a little better than such a blatant false dichotomy from the
article.

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uberalex
This is especially true since they pick a much, much leaner choices for
Subway. I can't understand that.

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auganov
Would be so much more valuable if they'd show the difference between the most
and least calorie-dense choices at the same restaurant. That way you'd
actually help people make better choices. It comes across as poor propaganda
(and is?) with their assumption that people will automagically choose calorie-
sparse meals at home.

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DKnoll
1\. Why would you base this around a single meal, when ideally your daily
caloric intake would be spread throughout your waking hours.

2\. Even suggesting that most people need 2000 calories is wildly dangerous as
this is a figure that will vary for EVERY individual. I myself need ~3000
calories just to maintain a healthy weight.

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mrfusion
How do you figure 3000?

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mrfusion
I don't understand how the steak can be 1600 calories? It would either have to
be fried or a huge steak, no?

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DanBC
They use a fatty "well marbled" cut of beef and add a lot of butter. The steak
is pretty large too.

There's about 400 calories in 8ozs of steak; there's about 350 calories in 50g
of butter.

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kenrikm
1) Show the worst food at Restaurants 2) Show Healthy food from home

Profit?

Talk about manipulating the facts to get the end result. Why would I drink
diet soda at home but always order regular at a restaurant? because that's the
only way to get the "oh wow" factor for the photos.

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claystu
I disagree...the restaurant pictures show what I see people typically
order...or darn close. Obviously, they have big menus and if you want, you can
go to a fast food restaurant and order nothing but green salad, but I don't
see many people doing that.

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rondon2
The person who eats 2,000 calories in one sitting at burger king is much more
likely to make a Frozen Pizza at home than a Arugula salad and Grilled fish.

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claystu
There is no reason to suppose this.

My wife eats salads all the time at home and packs them for lunch, but
whenever we go to a fast food joint, she orders the Big Mac and fries
specifically because she doesn't eat them at home and doesn't feel like eating
healthy. (That's why we got fast food in the first place)

Fun Fact: two slices of digiorno pepperoni (1/3 of the pizza) is still only
640 calories. So even if this person does cook a frozen pizza at home, it
would still be a lot healthier. An egg omelet with coffee, a salad for lunch
plus some fruit, and two slices of pizza plus some cookies for dinner would be
approximately 2,000 calories.

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rondon2
[http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/getnutrition/nutritionfacts.p...](http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/getnutrition/nutritionfacts.pdf)

A Big Mac is 530 and a Large Fry is 530. Your example is off by about 50%.

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Mz
Keep in mind that all of the examples are actively shooting to hit 2000
calories. It says nothing about what is a "typical" meal at the chain. In
fact, for the Chipotle example, it lists a burrito in order to hit that mark:
_Chipotle Carnitas burrito (945), chips and guacamole (770), Coke (276)._
then, in the paragraph below that, it indicates: _Chipotle says burrito bowls,
which leave out 300-calorie flour tortilla, even outsell burritos._
Furthermore, the authors chose the guacamole for the article because it is,
hands down, the highest calorie dip available. It is nearly twice as many
calories as the sour cream and it is ten times the calories of some of the
salsas. But most folks aren't ordering chips and guac. Chips and salsa is a
far more common thing to order as a side. My firsthand observation suggests
that, because the burritos are so big, people who order a burrito often do not
order any sides with it.

Source of the calorie counts for the sides: [http://www.chipotle.com/en-
US/menu/nutrition_calculator/nutr...](http://www.chipotle.com/en-
US/menu/nutrition_calculator/nutrition_calculator.aspx)

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legalbeagle
There is no information in the article about where the information on calorie
counts came from. Personally, they seem wrong to me, at least on some of the
items. I don't think the Cowboy Ribeye from Ruth's Cris, for example, really
contains 1650 calories.

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dsp1234
The Cowboy Ribeye is 22 ounces with bone-in. And some math:

    
    
      1 gram = 4 calories
      1 oz = 28.35 grams
      -----------------
      22 * 28.35 * 4 = 2495 calories (assuming pure protein)
    

That of course assumes that the whole thing is pure protein, when it obviously
has fat and bone in it. So at 1650 calories, the steak would have to about 2/3
protein. This matches up with my experience at Ruth's Chris. On top of that,
is the delicious butter they serve everything in, which is additional
calories.

So yeah, 1650 seems completely reasonable for the Cowboy Ribeye.

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legalbeagle
Two errors in this. First, the 22 oz is before cooking weight. After cooking
will be less - maybe 16 oz raw (after you deduct bone and fat) and 12 oz after
cooking. The remaining lean meat isn't pure protein. There's other tissues.
nutritiondata.self.com lists only about 76.7 calories per oz, or about 920
calories for the whole thing.

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DanBC
Why are you discounting fat? You don't lose that when cooking the steak.
You've forgotton to add anything for the butter they add. I don't think the
bone weighs six ounces - but I admit I have little idea what a fucking ounce
is.

Google tells me there are 291 calories in a cooked ribeye steak. That's over
1,000 for a 16 ounce steak.

You are severely underestimating the calorie content.

