Fast Food Calories?

How reliable would you say the nutritional information is on fast food websites? For example, Wendy's say their large chili is 330 calories but is it really? They also don't even count the calories of the lettuce and pickles they put on burgers. How accurate are their values, seeing as how they are based off of estimates and rounding?

I don't know about Wendy's, but if you look at McDonald's website, you can see the nutrition values of each item, and remove whatever toppings you don't eat (IE mayonnaise, etc.), so at least at McD's they do count everything, even pickles and lettuce.

Anyway, pickles and lettuce on a burger would probably add up to 20 calories altogether, MAX. 

I don't know about all that, but I just about Keeled over when I found out today that ONE SMALL SLICE of Cheesecake Factory plain cheesecake has 500 calories, 380 are from FAT and it has 43 carbs! I used to love Cheesecake Factory, So I almost bought the little plain cheesecake at Sam's Club....Glad I read the BOX!

 

I wish I knew how accurate they are but what is posted, makes me very very selective of what to eat.

I think it's pretty accurate but some places aren't careful about how much toppings they are putting on their food. For example, fast food workers might be carelessly putting on extra ketchup, mayo on their burgers without thinking about it. Restaurants might be putting extra cheese on their entrees.  The info they post is a pretty good basis but can very easily be modified. That is why I always get my dressing on the side and usually tell places to go easy on the cheeses and sauce.

It can definitely vary.  A manager at a Wendy's told my friend that if she wants chili to come on the end of the lunch hour (12:30-1:30) instead of the beginning (11:30-12:30) because the fat rises to the top of the chili pot and gets siphoned off more in the early servings of the day, so the later servings probably actually have less fat.  Interesting, and makes sense.

If you are eating out fast food, I'd say you could probably add an extra hundred calories to the estimate for a meal and be pretty sure you are covered on any spillover of a tsp or tbsp too much of a topping or an extra tomato or pickle.  I doubt they are adding extra cheese, since they usually charge you by the slice.  Their dressings usually come in packets with their own nutritional info, so that at least is something you can control.