Calorie posting seemed like a great idea to the Bloomberg administration, but the information could be totally wrong. Online magazine Gotham Gazette notes that, in some cases, independent testing shows that dishes have twice as many calories as are posted! In other cases, calorie counts may be off just because of the way a cook lays on the bacon. Since there is no degree of precision required by the New York law, restaurants can give any old number with no worries of a city testing program to check it out. But customers who think they are getting fraudulently fattened won't complain to the Health Department; they'll sue the restaurants, which is one reason the industry fought the law in the beginning. The moral is, as ever, don't believe everything you read.

Those Restaurant Calorie Counts: Too Good to Be True? [Gotham Gazette]