You probably know the popcorn at the movie theaters is far from healthy, but did you know having a medium popcorn and soda from a major national chain is like eating three McDonald’s Quarter Pounders with 12 pats of butter? That’s according to a new report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

CSPI says the popular combo from Regal, the country’s biggest movie chain, has 1,610 calories and three days’ worth – 60 grams – of saturated fat.

The study is an update to research CSPI did on movie theater popcorn 15 years ago.

Here are some other movie theater popcorn stats from CSPI’s new report:

Regal
Small, 11 cups
Calories 670
Saturated fat 34 g
Sodium 550 mg

AMC
Small, 6 cups
Calories 370
Saturated fat 20 g
Sodium 210 mg

Cinemark
Small, 8 cups
Calories 420
Saturated fat 2 g [popped in canola oil]
Sodium 690 mg

Makes me want to bring my own microwave popcorn to the movies! You?

[Photo Credit: stock.xchng]

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[Photo Credit: iStockPhoto]

What happens when appetizers at America’s top sports bar chains face off calorie to calorie… and fat gram to fat gram? FatFighterTV digs in to see which game day grub scores the most unhealthy penalties.

First up – the calorie champ:

1. Champps Americana: Champps’ Mile High Nachos w/Chicken scored 3600 calories and 224 grams of fat – Even I’m guilty of indulging in these, and I only shared them with one other person. I didn’t know they had as many calories as seven Quarter Pounders with Cheese. Yikes! Next time, I’ll invite more people!

FatFighterTV asked a Champps Americana spokesperson to comment on the Nachos’ first place ranking. “Our Nachos are an ideal item to share with 6-7 friends (easily),” says Rachel Phillips-Luther, Vice President- Marketing. “When you consider sharing that item with several friends, the calorie content per person is much more reasonable.”

*Second and third place high calorie honors both go to wings at The Greene Turtle:

2. The Greene Turtle: Smoky BBQ Boneless Wings – 25 of ‘em with Bleu Cheese dressing have 3180 calories and 199 grams of fat. They may be boneless, but they’re still fried, and it shows in the huge amount of fat and calories.

3. The Greene Turtle: Smoky BBQ Chicken Wings – 25 wings with Bleu Cheese dressing have 2984 calories and 211 fat grams – as much fat as what you get in seven Big Macs. Seriously.

4. Buffalo Wild Wings: Parmesan Garlic Boneless Wings – 24 with Bleu Cheese dressing have 2872 calories and 222 grams of fat. Watch out if you’re winging it bone-free. The boneless wings rack up more calories than the traditional ones at both The Greene Turtle and BW3.

5. The Greene Turtle: Southern Chicken Sliders with Crab Imperial – Get the Double Play (2 four-packs) and you’ll get 2730 calories and 98 grams of fat. Eat too many of these fried chicken sliders and you may not be able to slide into your jeans!

6. Buffalo Wild Wings: Parmesan Garlic Wings – 24 with Bleu Cheese dressing add up to 2488 calories and 198 grams of fat. What? Wings made it on this list again???!

7. Ram Restaurant & Brewery: Ram Favorites Platter – 2464 calories, 48 grams of saturated fat. Potato Skins, Mozzarella Sticks, Mini Cheese Quesadilla, Calamari and Buffalo Tenders with a variety of sauces. Even if you share this sampler with a friend, you’re still getting a day and a half’s worth of saturated fat, based on recommendations from the American Heart Association.

8. Champps’ Sampler Platter – 2072 calories, 121 grams of fat. Mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, potato skins and Buffalo wings served with a variety of sauces. As fried as it gets.

9. Ram Restaurant & Brewery: BBQ Chicken Quesadilla – 2066 calories, 54 grams of saturated fat. You’d have to run at a pace of six MPH for two hours just to burn off the calories from this mega meal. (based on someone who weighs 140 pounds)

10. Fox and Hound Pub & Grille: Grand Champion Wings/Hot Sauce - 1960 calories, 164 grams of fat – What’s up with all the wings on this list? Someone cry fowl!

Doing this research got me thinking – Why is it that we like to eat this kind of food when we watch sports, anyway? And while it’s nice to share appetizers, knowing that you’re going to share can make it more tempting to order more than one. Think of all the fat and calories you’re adding when you do that.

Oh, and while we were at it, FatFighterTV also compiled a list of the 10 Football Not-As-Fatties – appetizers with the fewest calories from the same sports bar chains, just in case you would rather order the lesser evils.

*Calories for an order of 25 boneless wings with bleu cheese dressing at The Greene Turtle range from 2649-3180, depending on the sauce. For the traditional wings, they range from 2452-2984.

Information Unknown
FatFighterTV contacted two other top sports bars. Damon’s Grill told us its nutrition information was not yet available but “please know we have placed this on our marketing plan as a high priority for our current fiscal year.”

Not Playing Ball
ESPN Zone said, “Unfortunately, we are unable to provide you with accurate nutritional information about our menu items. Much of that information depends on the condiments that we liberally add, along with the accompaniments that guests select.” Hmmm… the other sports bars use condiments and they didn’t have a problem coming up with the information.

How we did it
FatFighterTV determined the top sports bar chains based on information from Restaurants & Institutions’ 2009 Casual Dining rankings based on food and beverage sales. The nutrition information for both The Greene Turtle and Champps Americana was available online at each restaurant’s website. We contacted the other three sports bars as an average customer to see how quickly we could get the information. All of them – Fox and Hound Pub & Grille, Ram Restaurant & Brewery, and Buffalo Wild Wings – responded promptly. This report is based only on information available at the time of publication. Menus may vary by location.

Check out these outrageous foods:
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This may be worse than brain freeze – ice cream controlling our brains??? Scientists from UT Southwestern Medical Center say fat from foods like ice cream and burgers goes to the brain and can control it. Their study shows once the fat molecules are there, they trigger the brain to send messages to the body’s cells, warning them to ignore the appetite-suppressing signals from the hormones involved in regulating weight for up to three days.

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I know, I know. Just in time for those weekend indulgences, a new study finds eating fatty food seems to take its toll – almost immediately – on our short-term memory and exercise performance.  Of course, we already know that eating a high-fat diet can eventually lead to weight gain, heart disease and hurt our memory and other mental functions. But the new research shows indulging in fatty foods over a period of a few days can affect the brain and body long before you pack on those extra pounds.

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Unilever – the maker of soft margarines like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and Shedd’s Spread Country Crock – says it plans to remove all partially hydrogenated oils – artificial trans fats – from its soft-spread brands. The change will begin next month and be done by the second quarter of 2010.

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Obesity rates are still going up, up, up! A new report looks at obesity per state and finds the number of obese adults has increased in 23 states and did not go down in any states in the past year. In other words, we are fatter now than we were a year ago.

The report – F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing in America 2009 – comes from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It shows Mississippi has the highest rate of adult obesity at 32.5 percent – the fifth year in a row the state has topped the list. Colorado has the lowest rate of obese adults – 18.9 percent.

F as in Fat: Quick Stats

• Two-thirds of American adults are either obese or overweight.
• In 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent.
• In 1980, the national average for adult obesity was 15 percent.

State-by-State: Adult Obesity
1. Mississippi (32.5%)
2. Alabama (31.2%)
3. West Virginia (31.1%)
4. Tennessee (30.2%)
5. South Carolina (29.7%)
6. Oklahoma (29.5%)
7. Kentucky (29.0%)
8. Louisiana (28.9%)
9. Michigan (28.8%)
10. (tie) Arkansas (28.6%) and Ohio (28.6%)
12. North Carolina (28.3%) 13. Missouri (28.1%)
14. (tie) Georgia (27.9%) and Texas (27.9%)
16. Indiana (27.4%) 17. Delaware (27.3%)
18. (tie) Alaska (27.2%) and Kansas (27.2%)
20. (tie) Nebraska (26.9%) and South Dakota (26.9%)
22. (tie) Iowa (26.7%) and North Dakota (26.7%) and Pennsylvania (26.7%)
25. (tie) Maryland (26.0%) and Wisconsin (26.0%)
27. Illinois (25.9%)
28. (tie) Oregon (25.4%) and Virginia (25.4%) and Washington (25.4%)
31. Minnesota (25.3%)
32. Nevada (25.1)
33. (tie) Arizona (24.8%) and Idaho (24.8%)
35. Maine (24.7%)
36. New Mexico (24.6%)
37. New York (24.5%)
38. Wyoming (24.3%)
39. (tie) Florida (24.1%) and New Hampshire (24.1%)
41. California (23.6%)
42. New Jersey (23.4%)
43. Montana (22.7%)
44. Utah (22.5%)
45. District of Columbia (22.3%)
46. Vermont (22.1%)
47. Hawaii (21.8%)
48. Rhode Island (21.7%)
49. Connecticut (21.3%)
50. Massachusetts (21.2%)
51. Colorado (18.9%)

Our Nation’s Children

• The percentage of obese or overweight children is at or above 30 percent in 30 states.
• Mississippi also had the highest rate of obese and overweight children (ages 10 to 17) at 44.4 percent.
• Minnesota and Utah had the lowest rate at 23.1 percent.
• Eight of the 10 states with the highest rates of obese and overweight children are in the South.
• Childhood obesity rates have more than tripled since 1980.

State-by-State: Obese and Overweight Children Ages 10-17
1. Mississippi (44.4%)
2. Arkansas (37.5%)
3. Georgia (37.3%)
4. Kentucky (37.1%)
5. Tennessee (36.5%)
6. Alabama (36.1%)
7. Louisiana (35.9%)
8. West Virginia (35.5%)
9. District of Columbia (35.4%)
10. Illinois (34.9%)
11. Nevada (34.2%)
12. Alaska (33.9%)
13. South Carolina (33.7%)
14. North Carolina (33.5%)
15. Ohio (33.3%)
16. Delaware (33.2%)
17. Florida (33.1%)
18. New York (32.9%)
19. New Mexico (32.7%)
20. Texas (32.2%)
21. Nebraska (31.5%)
22. Kansas (31.1%)
23. (tie) Missouri (31.0%) and New Jersey (31.0%) and Virginia (31.0%)
26. (tie) Arizona (30.6%) and Michigan (30.6%)
28. California (30.5%)
29. Rhode Island (30.1%)
30. Massachusetts (30.0%)
31. Indiana (29.9%)
32. Pennsylvania (29.7%)
33. (tie) Oklahoma (29.5%) and Washington (29.5%)
35. New Hampshire (29.4%)
36. Maryland (28.8%)
37. Hawaii (28.5%)
38. South Dakota (28.4%)
39. Maine (28.2%)
40. Wisconsin (27.9%)
41. Idaho (27.5%)
42. Colorado (27.2%)
43. Vermont (26.7%)
44. Iowa (26.5%)
45. (tie) Connecticut (25.7%) and North Dakota (25.7%) and Wyoming (25.7%)
48. Montana (25.6%)
49. Oregon (24.3%)
50. (tie) Minnesota (23.1%) and Utah (23.1%)

The report says the tough economy could make the obesity epidemic even worse. Food prices, especially for more nutritious foods, are expected to go up, making it harder for families to eat a healthy diet. Plus rates of depression, anxiety, and stress – which are linked to obesity for many people – are also increasing because of the strain of the recession.

You can see the full report here.
Compare it to last year’s report here.

[Photo Credit: stockxpert]

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If you love peanut butter as much as I do – which is VERY MUCH – but wish you could ditch a lot of the calories and fat, PB2 is coming to your peanut butter-loving rescue! I just bought some a few weeks ago and I’ve been adding it to my almost-daily protein shakes and I love it! .

So, what is PB2? It’s powdered peanut butter with WAY fewer calories and MUCH less fat:

• 2 tablespoons of regular peanut butter have 200 calories and 16 grams of fat
• 2 tablespoons of PB2 have 53 calories and 1.87 grams of fat

Wow, huh?! How do they do that??!! The folks who make PB2 over at Bell Plantation basically squeeze out the oil from roasted peanuts. What’s left is powdered peanut butter with no artificial sweeteners or preservatives.

Up for grabs this week – a 4-pack of PB2, compliments of Bell Plantation. To enter for a chance to win, head down to the comments and tell me how you like to eat or drink your peanut butter.

A few contest details – it runs through midnight EST this Friday, July 3, you have to have a U.S. mailing address to enter… and we will use random.org to pick the winner.

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It seems as though the junkifying of our food may start way early. A new survey from a British food watchdog group finds some baby foods contain as much sugar and saturated fats as cookies or cheeseburgers. The group says many baby foods are advertised as healthy, but in terms of sugar and saturated fat content, some of them are actually worse than junk food.

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Do you bundle up before you hit the pool? Not this year!

Chant along with our friends over at Does This Blog Make Us Look Fat? and you’ll be on your way to bare it all… or at least bare what you want!

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