Watch the Show…and Your Waistline

Now that the holiday season has begun, the Winter movie season is in full gear. Before you head to the theater, you may want to read this. A couple of weeks ago, the results of a survey from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) revealed the true nutritional content of those bags and buckets of movie theater popcorn. The stats were shocking — if the amount of saturated fat and sodium in the popcorn doesn’t lead to heart failure, seeing the numbers may!

All jokes aside, everyone likes a snack when watching movies, but watching your waistline is just as important. You can find all the results of the survey in the CSPI article, but here are some to give you an idea of what you’d be getting at a Regal theater:

• Small popcorn without butter (11 cups): 670 calories, 34 g saturated fat, 550 mg sodium
• Medium or Large popcorn without butter (20 cups): 1200 calories, 60 g saturated fat, 980 mg sodium

If you remember correctly from the Less Healthy Fat Talk post a few weeks ago, saturated fat should be kept to 7% or less of total calories. You’d have to eat between 4,400 and 7,700 calories to keep your saturated fat levels in the healthy range just from the popcorn alone. That doesn’t sound too healthy to me. No wonder there’s an obesity epidemic going on!

If popcorn is an unhealthy choice at the movies, what should you eat? Find out in tomorrow’s nutritioulicious™ post!