How many calories are in chain restaurant meals?

From Cosmopolitan

Well this is an almighty shame. New research carried out by the experts at the Good Housekeeping Institute has revealed many main meals served at high street restaurant chains contain almost 1,000 calories per dish.

That's despite the guidelines released recently from Public Health England, which advise consuming just 600 calories in your evening meal (as well as another 600 calories at lunch, and 400 at breakfast).

Good Housekeeping investigated 16 chain restaurants to assess the nutritional value of their food, and just how accessible that information was for customers. The restaurants they looked at were:

• ASK

• Beefeater

• Bella Italia

• Bill's

• Cafe Rouge

• Frankie & Benny's

• GBK

• Harvester

• Nando's

• Pizza Express

• Pizza Hut

• Prezzo

• Slug & Lettuce

• Wagamama

• Wetherspoon

• Zizzi

Of all the restaurants, three-quarters offered calorie information on their website (which was a 63% increase from when the GHI last looked into it, back in 2011). But despite this, only one of the 16 restaurants – J D Wetherspoon – actually provided calorie information on its in-branch menus. Good old Spoons.