About

About Counter Notes

An independent publication about eating out: how menu nutrition information is produced, what menu labelling rules require, and why the figure on the board is often not the figure on your tray.

Counter Notes is about one narrow thing: the gap between the nutrition information restaurants publish and the food people are actually handed. That gap is not usually dishonesty. It comes from standard builds, regional menus, rounding bands, excluded condiments and tables that outlive the recipes they describe.

What this publication does not do

It publishes no nutrition figures of its own. Where a figure is relevant, it points at the operator's own current source, because that is the only version anyone stands behind. It does not reproduce third-party nutrition tables, and it does not estimate figures that an operator has not published.

It is independent, and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or speaking for any restaurant, brand, product or person named in its reporting. Restaurant names appear as factual reference only.

Nothing here is medical, dietary or nutritional advice, and nothing here is a weight-loss claim or programme.

This domain's history

This domain previously hosted a weight-tracking software product, discontinued by its author, and a public message board. Neither is published here. The message board in particular contained personal health information posted by members of the public twenty years ago, and it has not been reproduced.

Corrections

Corrections are made on the page where the error appeared, with a note of what changed.