A quick estimate when you eat out

Why restaurant meals are hard

At home you know what went in the pan. In a restaurant you do not, and kitchens are generous with butter, oil and sugar because they make food taste good. Portions also vary from place to place and from day to day. No app can see any of that in a photo, and Luca does not pretend to.

A simple routine

1. Take one photo when the plate arrives, with the whole plate inside the square frame. It takes a couple of seconds.
2. Look at the item list later, not at the table.
3. Adjust for the kitchen. If the dish was fried, creamy or glossy with sauce, add oil or butter as an item. If you left a third on the plate, reduce the portion.
4. If the menu printed a calorie figure, use it. Edit the calories to match.

No photo? Say it or type it afterwards: “margherita pizza, about three quarters, and a side salad”.

Good enough is the goal

One loosely estimated dinner does not spoil a week of data. A missing dinner does, a little, because blank days are where logging habits end. The point of a quick photo is to keep the record going with an honest “roughly this”.

Sharing plates and drinks

• Shared dishes: photograph the table if you like, then edit the portions down to what you ate.
• Drinks: type them. A photo of a glass says little about what is in it.
• Bread, oil, nibbles: add them as items if you had them. They are easy to forget.

More on this in calorie estimates when eating out.