Bad foods

Men’s Health editor-in-chief David Zinczenko has a new book out---Eat This, Not That!

Highlights of bad foods:
  • Worst Fast Food Meal: McDonald’s Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips with creamy ranch sauce. Chicken sounds healthy, but not at 830 calories.
  • Worst Drink: Jamba Juice Chocolate Moo’d Power Smoothie. With 166 grams of sugar, you could have had eight servings of Ben & Jerry’s.
  • Worst Supermarket Meal: Pepperidge Farm Roasted Chicken Pot Pie. It packs 64 grams of fat.
  • Worst “Healthy” Burger: Ruby Tuesday Bella Turkey Burger. With 1,145 calories, not a very healthy choice.
  • Worst Airport Snack: Cinnabon Classic Cinnamon Roll. Packed with 813 hot gooey calories and 5 grams of trans fats.
  • Worst Kids’ Meal: Macaroni Grill Double Macaroni ‘n Cheese. With 62 fat grams, it’s the equivalent of 1.5 full boxes of Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese.
  • Worst Salad: On the Border Grande Taco Salad with Taco Beef. A salad with 102 grams of fat and 2,410 mg of sodium.
  • Worst Dessert: Chili’s Chocolate Chip Paradise Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream. At 1,600 calories, it’s like eating the caloric equivalent of three Big Macs.
What makes me sick is the lack of food information on fast-foods and restaurant foods. Even foods you can buy in the store with nutrition labels, I would wager than a majority of Americans do not know how to read nutrition labels. I applaud the federal government for requiring labels, but what good do the labels do if the general consumer cannot understand the information? The nutrition label system is like giving consumers access to prescriptions drugs and saying "here's the information on the drugs...you decide what to do now." Where is the doctor in that equation? For food, where does the nutritionist fit in our lives? It is obvious that the current method of "put the information out there and let the people decide on their own diets" is not getting America any healthier--and it costs not only the individuals themselves--but American taxpayers, too ($117 Billion total cost of obesity in 2000). There needs to be a new approach to America's nutrition--perhaps--nutrition education campaigns? Requirements of fatty, sodium-ridden, empty-calorie foods to carry a warning label? I don't know--what do you think? One start is to begin educating yourself on nutrition.

The 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey estimate 66 percent of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese and the Department of Health and Human Services notes that approximately 300,000 deaths each year in the United States may be attributable to obesity. To put that in perspective, 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking each year.

Check out the terrifying trends in obesity from 1985 to 2006 watching this interactive map.

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