Home > Media > Books > Michael F. Jacobson and Jayne R. D. Hurley - Restaurant Confidential: The Shocking Truth About What You're Really Eating When You're Eating Out
Michael F. Jacobson and Jayne R. D. Hurley - Restaurant Confidential: The Shocking Truth About What You're Really Eating When You're Eating Out
Pros: This is nutritional information that you might not know
Cons: You might not want some restaurant favorites anymore.
The Bottom Line: This book targets restaurant items high in fat/calories and offers healthier alternatives. Although it might change eating habits, it is a must read!
GravityGirl's Full Review: Michael F. Jacobson and Jayne R. D. Hurley - Resta...
I purchased Restaurant Confidential recently and I have found it to be very informative…almost too informative if you ask me. The book is published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and their goal seems to be to educate the consumers about the nutritional content or lack thereof of various restaurant items.
The book contains 18 chapters and an index. The first two are devoted to America's obsession with eating out and eating out healthfully. The subsequent chapters are devoted to discussing the nutritional value of food at ethnic (Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Mexican and Greek) restaurants (each type gets a chapter). Also, sandwich shops, pizza places, seafood, steakhouses, dinner houses (i.e. Fridays, Chilis, etc), family style restaurants, beverages, pastries and desserts, fast food, mall food and movie theatre food are all analyzed in great and sometimes shocking detail.
The book comes with many helpful charts such as their "Restaurant Hall of Fame" and their "Hall of Shame." Not surprisingly, Subway's "7 subs with 6 grams of fat or less" tops the Hall of Fame. I was surprised to see that the blooming onion that many restaurants offer (a fried onion cut into petal like strips and served with a dipping sauce) was not the top item on the list. The #1 item on the hall of shame is cheese fries with ranch dressing (also topped with bacon). This appetizer has 3,010 calories and 217 grams of fat! Yikes!
Another helpful series of charts are the "10 Best Restaurant Meals" and the 10 Worst Restaurant Meals." These charts pair items from popular restaurant and analyze their calorie and fat content. For example, a McDonald's chicken Caesar with fat-free herb vinaigrette and a fruit and yogurt parfait only have 520 calories and 8 grams of fat. On the hall of shame side, a double whopper with cheese, king sized fries and king sized coke is 2,050 calories and 146 grams of fat. While the vast majority of their information is very helpful, it is sometimes just a tiny bit exaggerated. For example, they say that a prime rib, Caesar salad and loaded baked potato are 2,210 calories and 151 grams of fat. This is very true- however, at the very least, they fail to mention (until later) that this is the 16 ounce portion and that it is untrimmed. I don't know of anybody who would eat the fat from a steak. If you know, by all means, let me know. Also, a "loaded" baked potato could mean just butter and sour cream or it could mean butter, sour cream, cheese and bacon. They don't tell you which one. As you can see, if you love prime rib dinners, you shouldn't immediately be frightened away- simply trim your steak and/or order a smaller size steak, order baked potato toppings on the side and eliminate the bacon and order the Caesar dressing on the side. They didn't really tell me this (except for the part about the dressing on the side), I had to figure it out for myself.
For those of you who are trying to cut down in sodium or cholesterol, there are also charts with foods highest in cholesterol and sodium.
For each of the chapters, the authors will go through typical items on the menu of each type of restaurant and offer a "bottom line." Also, they will "translate" what various menu items mean. For example, in the Italian chapter, you can learn what it means if the words "alfredo, frito, and griglia" mean among others. Each chapter also provides strategies for eating healthy cuisine at each of the restaurants. Finally, nutritional information is included for various types of food typically found at the restaurant the chapter is devoted to. One of the features I enjoyed about the nutritional information is that they will give the nutritional information for an entrée (a BBQ chicken breast, for example) and then give the total nutritional information if you were to add a salad and baked potato.
The meal descriptions are sometimes very interesting and informative. For example, the authors describe a mushroom cheeseburger (with sautéed onions, sautéed mushrooms and mayonnaise) as containing 900 calories and 57 grams of fat. They say that if you add onion rings to your meal, it is the caloric equivalent of eating "5 strips of bacon, 4 Twinkies, 3 slices of pepperoni pizza, 2 banana splits and a Big Mac." Yuck!
Fast food is also discussed- there is one popular fast food restaurant that the authors suggest you avoid entirely because of their unhealthy meals. Another nice feature of the nutritional information is the pairing of items, like I mentioned before. In addition to giving the information for the combo meals, they also give their suggested combos- which can easily be created from the menu. For example, you can have a large chili, side salad with low fat honey mustard dressing and an iced tea for 470 calories and 14 grams of fat.
I found this book to be most helpful. As you can see from reading my review, it is filled with very useful information, although some of it is quite shocking. I learned that my favorite entree from a Mexican restaurant is one of the unhealthiest. I love to eat beef and cheese nachos, but I might have to rethink my eating habits after I learned that the appetizer (I used to get it as a meal) contains 1360 calories and 89 grams of fat. It is described as worse than eating half a can of Spam.
The comparisons are another nice feature. I grew up learning about the four food groups- now, there is the food pyramid with recommended daily allowances. I don't know how many calories I'm supposed to eat every day or how much fat I am supposed to consume. The book also provided me with that information. My point is that even though I can look at the nutritional information and see that a mushroom burger and onion rings is high in calories and fat, it didn't really hit me until they listed all the things you could eat to equal that one meal.
I highly recommend this book, although I am warning you that some of your favorite dishes might not seem so appealing after reading it. I do not think the authors are trying to shock us--well, maybe they are, just a little, but it's for our own good! I think their main goal is to educate the American consumer. And believe me, if you purchase this book, you will receive quite an education!
A nutrition book which reads like a thriller, "Restaurant Confidential" profiles eateries, gives scientific data on the content of popular dishes, and...More at Cook's Books
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