A standard large popcorn and large soda combo at the nation’s largest multiplex theaters provides 1,900 calories, 275 percent of the daily saturated fat limit, and 13 tablespoons of added sugar.
Yikes! That’s a day’s worth of calories for the average adult.
The popcorn alone is calorically equivalent to THREE Big Mac’s.
What’s truly a shame is that movie popcorn tends to give the whole grain an unfairly bad reputation.
When air popped and sprinkled with a little salt, popcorn is a healthy, low-calorie snack.
Why, then, is the stuff in the oversized buckets such a nutrition disaster? It’s all about the oil it is popped in.
The large majority of movie theaters use coconut oil, which is chock-full of unhealthy saturated fat.
This is the fat that raises total and LDL (unhealthy) cholesterol.
The practice of then drenching this popcorn in liquid butter also does not help.
Theater managers be damned, I like to bring my own healthy snacks to movies (yes, I throw out all my wrappers on my way out).
Some good ones? A small bag of trail mix, a food bar (i.e.: Lara, Clif Nectar, gnu, Pure), an apple, whole grain crackers, and your best weapon against mindless snacking — gum!
