Friday, November 2, 2012

Sad Apples


It's day two of my (almost) sugarless adventure and it's already a lot harder than I thought it'd be. Last night, fiance and I went to Chili's for dinner. I didn't realize it until my plate came - I had ordered Cinnamon Apples for dessert! I gave them to fiance and he was too full to eat them. So they were sadly abandoned on our table. Better to waste than to the waist! (I take no credit for that inspiration little saying.) It really opened my eyes to this habit of sweets eating that I've developed. It seemed like an appropriate dessert. It wasn't chocolate, it wasn't baked dough, it wasn't candy, and because it had the word "apple" in it, I was tricked into thinking it might actually be healthy! I'm sure I've chosen to eat deceptively "healthy" foods a lot! A few of the things I thought of... 

  • Dark Chocolate Covered Raisinets: They boast "30% less fat than the other leading brands" and "1/2 serving of fruit in every 1/4 cup". To get 1/2 serving a fruit in your 1/4 cup serving, you'd actually be consuming 26 grams of sugar! (Who ever eats just 1/4 cup of Rasinets anyway?) I'm not sure how many of those are added and how many are naturally occurring in the fruit, but that's well over the daily recommended sugar intake for an adult woman. (20 grams)
  • Junior Mints: These are one of my absolute favorites! The box reads "A low fat candy". It is! Only 3 grams of fat. 16 pieces per serving - pretty generous! 150 calories per serving - excellent! Seems to good to be true right? Well, it is. 32 grams of sugar per serving. That would be 2 grams of sugar in each piece of candy!
  • Chili's Cinnamon Apples: Cinnamon is healthy, apples are healthy, yet this side item has 270 calories and 11 grams of fat. Much to my dismay, Chili's has not released the sugar content to the public. I'm thinking that's bad, very bad.

The moral of the story: Think before you eat! Read the nutritional label, question your restaurant choices, research their menu before you head out. Corporations don't care about your health, they want their food to taste addictively good so you come back for more. 

Anyone else care to share a little research on some of their favorites? I'd love to hear! (Please continue to convince me not to eat this stuff!)

A shameful side note - I almost ate a chocolate chip I found on the floor of my car today. Low point. I stopped myself.


References:

No comments:

Post a Comment