In a bid to trim America's waistline, cities like Philadelphia require calories listed on restaurant menus.
And soon, menu labeling will be the law of the land.
But can you believe what you read?
A new study shows that MOST of the counts are accurate, but not all.
Researchers at Tufts University in Massachusetts found that high-calorie foods sometimes had fewer calories than listed.
But those listed as "low calorie" were sometimes way off-the-mark.
"We had one food that came in that contained a thousand calories more than the amount listed on the menu, which even we were shocked about," says Susan Robers, Ph.D., leader of the research team.
Soups & salads, which are popular with the weight-conscious, differed the most from the menu, while pizza differed the least.
And they say calorie counts at fast-food eateries were more accurate than those at sit-down restaurants.
Dr. Roberts say the inaccuracies are sabotaging good weight control intentions for an unknown number of Americans.
"Nobody can lose weight if they are eating out and receiving hundreds of thousands more calories than they think," says Roberts.
The numbers are becoming ever more important, because Americans eat away from home at least three times a week, consuming about a third of their calories in restaurants.
