FDA-Required Calorie Information for Restaurant Menus

By May 7, 2018, any restaurant-type establishment with 20 or more locations must post the calorie information for all menu items.  As customers become accustomed to seeing this information at larger chains, they will begin to expect this same information from smaller, local eateries. If you have this information ready you will not have to tell your customers, “We are not required to tell you the calories” when they ask you for them.

Resources for adding calorie information to your menu

A good summary of the rules can be found on the FDA website (here). A real headache comes when you start to break down each recipe and attempt to establish the total caloric content of one serving.  It will be hard enough to calculate the calories in one bagel, let alone a bagel sandwich with cheese and side of tomato slices or chips!

A good place to begin would be with the supplier of your ingredients, they will have a Nutrition Statement for each ingredient you order. If you would like to see what a Nutrition Statement looks like, send us an email  customerservice@singingdogvanilla.com. Erin will send you our nutrition statement for Pure Vanilla Extract. At the top of the statement will be the calorie count for 100 grams of that ingredient. Use this information to determine the number of calories you are adding from each ingredient. Add the total for all the ingredients then divide by the number of servings you get from each batch. This will result in the number of calories per serving. If the total calories from a batch of cinnamon rolls are 3,600, and one batch makes 12 cinnamon rolls, then each cinnamon roll is approximately 300 calories.

It will be easier if you measure your recipes by metric weight.  You can convert your standard measurements to metric using online calculators such as https://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/ounces-to-grams.htm

For ingredients such as vanilla extract or salt, which are usually used in amounts smaller than 100 grams at a time, some simple math with tell you how many calories per recipe.  100 grams of ground vanilla beans is 385 calories. If your recipe only calls for 2 grams of ground vanilla then the calories from the ground vanilla portion of the batch is 7.70 calories.

Try web-based calorie calculators

You can also try using some web-based calorie calculators such as this one from the USDA https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/myrecipe.aspx . You can select your ingredient type and quantity from a drop-down menu. This should give you a pretty close estimate of the calorie count for recipes that use standard ingredients. For your creations that include less common ingredients, you will need to get your supplier to provide you with the calorie count.  Please feel free to give us a call (888-343-0002) if we can help you with calorie information related to any vanilla product.  Even if you are not a customer of ours we can help you with the numbers.