On Mother’s Day I was rewarded for7 years of patience and kindness with breakfast in bed, some adorable handmade cards and gifts, and a gourmet dinner out on Seattle’s waterfront. Wait, scratch that last part… it was Red Robin. BUT, it is on the waterfront in Seattle and you can watch the ferries glide in and out and see the sunset out over the islands – not bad. And, they have the holy grail of dining out with diabetes: The Nutritional Menu! Trying to eat out with diabetes is really tricky, because most of the time you have no idea what they are feeding you and you have to guess. So when you find a restaurant that gives you the nutrition data, you feel like you’re getting a little vacation from measuring and weighing everything. Too bad it is only fast food and chain restaurants that offer this info right now – hopefully that will change in the future.
After the kids ordered, we started adding up the carbs in what Cooper ordered: grilled cheese, mandarin oranges and milk. Here is the info listed:
- Grilled cheesewich: 440 cal, 30 carbs
- Kids milk: 222 cal, 8 carbs
- Mandarin oranges: 22 cal, 5 carbs
The sandwich sounded right, but the milk and oranges seemed way off, so I made my own estimates on those. I took the cups home so I could measure them, and was very annoyed to calculate these numbers at home:
- milk (12 oz): 18 carbs
- mandarin oranges, light (1/2 cup): 16 carbs
Who knows what was in the sandwich, but Cooper was in the 300s at bedtime, leading me to believe that info was wrong too.
I wrote an email to RR expressing my irritation and explaining how this can be dangerous for people with diabetes to be given the wrong information. I got a reply back yesterday apologizing for the confusion – they said the milk was an error and they would be changing it, but claimed the oranges were OK, and that I was given too large of a serving size (3x too large?!). I was hoping for a gift certificate, cuz Father’s Day is coming, ya know, but no such luck.
Anyone have an opinion about this… are any of these nutritional menus to be trusted?
Free Snack 
I think Cooper might have eaten half of one of the coloring crayons also! Nice post!
Hi Amy, I hopped over from Beta Buddies…thanks for your comment AND I remember reading about you and Cooper on I Am Your Pancreas. Eating out is ALWAYS tricky…or so it seems. We do better if we eat out for lunch, because Joe is active during the day. At night, that is when the eating out gets really tricky…and the 300s ensue. There are tricks around the 300’s…usually it is an extended bolus used on the pump. Keep up the great work with Cooper. I am adding you to my blog roll.
Way to go writing RR! you can start a revolution. I would write them back and demand a gift certificate or else you’ll be forced to launch http://www.RedRobinLies.com
That is frustrating! Some places do respond better – we had something similar happen with “flourless sprouted seed” bread (“great for diabetics!”) from Trader Joe’s. The serving size was HALF the weight of the actual slice, and the carb count was of course double. After a few super highs after breakfast, we figured it out and left a comment on their site – and someone called the next day to say they were working with the vendor on it. Nutritional info. on the package didn’t change (grr) but at least they removed all the fancy advertising about being great for diabetics. We don’t leave home without a scale, sadly – hard to eat out iwthout it.