Celebrate Independence Day and Ask the Nurse gives movie food a health rating
Happy Independence Day and July!
from all of us at Assured Healthcare
Movie food gets a one-star rating for health
Ask the Nurse: Christine Hammerlund
President of Assured Healthcare Staffing and Nurse
Dear Chris: I just got back from the theater with our three kids and it appears as though I spent $80 and I'm not sure where. The concession stands seems to latch onto my ATM and won't let it go. At least tell me that theater food is OK for my kids. Wanda in Wauconda
Dear Wanda. OK so, theater food is great for your kids. You wanted me to say it, and I did. Unfortunately, Wanda, it's not true.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest a non-profit watchdog group, has done all the research on this topic, and it's not good, Wanda.
In fact, I think that bad eating habits are not a long series of poorly cooked meals at home. We learn to eat lousy food in fast-food environments.
We have “super sized” ourselves into a nation of overweight people.
And personally, I think the idea that we are nation obsessed with being fit, exercising and eating properly is a lot of hooey. We're reading our own publicity.
We start eating badly when we are young, and I think we get started in places like movie theaters and fast food restaurants.
Our diets have become a long series of eating out in places that serve food that nobody with an ounce of sense would eat at home. After you've eaten 8,000 pounds of terrible food over the course of being a teenager, you have developed full-fledged bad eating habits. Generally movie food is about the worst thing you can feed kids.
Air cooked popcorn is good for you but theaters add oil for the buttery taste which makes the calories and fat explode. Then they douse it in salt.
The super large popcorn at most theaters produces about 22 cups of popcorn. The researchers translate that into 1,200 calories and 60 grams of saturated fat. We put that in our bodies. Yikes.
That's enough to sink a battleship. So at least pick the smaller size.
I've found that all clerks at theaters are trained to “upsell” concession stand food. For 75 cents more, you can get the box of popcorn that is measured in tonnage. Popcorn is so cheap to produce that the theater is always giving itself the pricing break this way. It's a win-win except for your arteries.
You can't escape most theaters without buying a soft drink that's measured in gallons. Remember long ago the average movie Coke was 7 ounces. Now the average is 32 ounces and the bigger is 500 calories and 33 teaspoons of sugar.
Do I have to be obvious? Buy some bottled water.
Candy at theaters I sold in 4-ounce boxes. Even a 3-ounce box of Milk Duds is 7 grams of saturated fat and 500 calories.
The calorie and fat explosion in theaters is usually centered on chocolate candy. Sorry for you chocolate fans, but it's true.
As for every other edible substance sold in theaters, all most all of it is terrible if you eat enough. And all the marketing inside the theater is designed to make you eat more. Overindulging at the theater seems to be a habit we've developed, too. Try to un-develop that habit, especially for your kids.
If you control what your kids see on TV and hear in music, it's just as important to know what they're eating.