I was finally able to get some nutrition information from IHOP (Dinequity) because of the new law here in California that requires restaurant chains with 20 or more locations to have nutrition information available at the place of purchase. Of course, that has nothing to do with the website, so they still don’t have information available for the whole world. Also note that I wasn’t allowed to take the information with me (my wife asked). I could only read it.
Now that I’ve seen it, I see why they aren’t eager to give it out. Most items on there are more than 1000 calories. Some of them were more than 2000 calories. I was amazed. I would have thought that they would have better nutrition than this. Ah well. If you live in California (or a state with a similar law), go see for yourself.
I find it hard to believe that a multibillion dollar company like Dineequity doesn’t give have nutrition information for their restaurants (IHOP and Applebee’s) on their website. They don’t give it out in the restaurants either.
Here is a excerpt from the Applebee’s FAQ . . .
Q: Where can I get nutritional information on Applebee’s® items?
A: We provide Weight Watchers Points® values on all of our Weight Watchers® items. We do not provide nutritional information on other Applebee’s® items, except where required by law.
Here is an excerpt from the IHOP FAQ . . .
Q: Is nutritional information available?
A: Currently we do not offer this information on our website, but expect to in the future. IHOP offers a wide variety of food that should allow most people to choose a meal that suits their dietary needs.
For a company like this, I view these as saying, “Our food is so bad (nutrition wise), it’s best that we don’t have the information in a place that is easily accessible to our customers.” And indeed, when I looked up Applebee’s Boneless Chicken Wings appetizer on the internet, I found that it’s 1700 calories. I found this information on one of those calorie counting websites. It could be true or false, but since I don’t have anything officially from Applebee’s to compare it to, I’ll just take their word for it. My wife says I should send them a letter about how disappointed I am, but I’m not sure that is going to do any good. Ah well.
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