Enjoy a Healthy Movie

The current economic meltdown has many families opting out of a trip to Disneyland and in to the nearest movie theater where the Disney thrill can be enjoyed in relatively inexpensive, two-hour local jaunts.  Dismal headlines may make such a family outing seem like a fiscally healthy thing to do but health comes in many flavors.  A recent study seems to say movie-goers need to beware for nutritional health, too.

According to the study, conducted by the non-profit consumer awareness group Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), popcorn doesn't deserve the healthy reputation it often carries, especially when it's popcorn bought at the movie theater's food kiosk.  True, popcorn is a healthy snack, loaded with all the desirable nutritional value of whole grain corn, but that's the stuff made straight from the dried kernels you pop at home in your air-popper, not the sticky, gooey, bright yellow stuff you find at most movie-house food counters.

The CSPI study ran laboratory analyses of popcorn samples taken from the nation's three largest movie theater chains - Regal, AMC, and Cinemark.  Samples were purchased at movie theaters in Illinois, Maryland, Texas, and Washington, DC.

What did they find?

You would have to eat three Quarter Pounder hamburgers from McDonald's, along with 12 pats of butter (that's 3/4 of a stick), to get the same number of calories as you'd get from eating a medium popcorn and soda at the movies.  Or three sticks of butter.  At Regal, where the popcorn packs the most calories, that's 1,610 calories and 60 grams of saturated fat.  The average adult American only needs about 2,000 calories each day so that leaves just 400 calories to dine on the remaining 22 hours of the day to avoid excess caloric intake.  Those 60 grams of saturated fat equal about three days worth of optimum fat supply for a healthy diet.

The CSPI study also suggests being leery of the calorie counts posted at your local movie theater, too.  Regal says its medium popcorn, before adding any buttery topping, contains 720 calories, or only about 44% the number of calories revealed in the CSPI lab analyses.

And that soda?  If you must have one, make it sugar-free.  The average medium fountain drink from these movie theaters supplied between 300 and 400 calories each.  That's enough, along with the medium popcorn, to satisfy the entire 2,000 calories per day needed by an adult.  Chugging Regal's largest container of soda is the same as sucking down about 33 teaspoons of sugar (500 calories).  That's almost 3/4 a cup of sugar in every large sugar-sweetened beverage.

Nutritional health isn't the only health that suffers here.  The CSPI study says you pay a whopping $12 for that medium popcorn-and-soda combo whereas it takes only a handful of pennies to purchase the raw ingredients that go into making it.

How do you enjoy that movie without risking fiscal and nutritional disaster?  Enjoy a delicious, nutritious family lunch or dinner BEFORE buying those movie tickets.  Then sit back and enjoy the show!