Two Thumbs Down
I try to tell myself that the reason I don’t go to the movies anymore is because of the absurdly overpriced tickets or that I can’t stand the 20 minutes of TV commercials PRE-previews (what happened to just playing cartoons by the way?!) …but in reality, I know my boycott of the big screen is because I can’t resist the amazingly buttery popcorn. Although I knew an apple would clearly be a better pick than even a “small” tub of kernels, I never realized exactly how big the difference was until just recently.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (think the Jenny Craig of non-profits) released a report that claims a medium popcorn and soda combo at the average movie theatre has 1,610 calories and 60 grams of saturated fat – to put it into perspective, this equals a stick of butter which is basically three days worth of saturated fat. For all of this, you could eat three McDonald’s quarter pounders. Even worse is that these statistics are BEFORE you even add the butter. According to this study, Regal Cinema is the worst when it comes to loading in the popcorn calories with AMC sliding in at a close second.
Instead of butter (and don’t think this is just my Asian pride taking over) I like to drizzle on soy sauce to get a salty/sweet popcorn combo. Some smaller boutique theatres also pop in non-hydrogenated canola oil or other healthier alternatives (for when you can’t sneak in a bottle of Kikkoman Soy Sauce).
I just hope they don’t release any info on Reese’s Pieces because then honestly, what is the point of going to the movies?!
Holy crap…I used to think a popcorn would be the safer choice compared to the candy. I guess I was very very wrong.
Jack said this on November 20, 2009 at 5:23 PM |