Health Watch: Eat This, No That | ABC30 Fresno

kfsn

By ABC30

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

10/6/2008 ORLANDO, Fla. Lunchtime can be fast and furious! Which fast food choices are the best for you? The book Eat This, Not That! is revealing some healthy and not so healthy choices. The author and editor in chief of Men's Health, David Zinczenko, found the very worst combo meal is the Burger King triple Whopper with cheese, fries and a coke, which packs a whopping 2,200 calories and 115 grams of fat. It contains more carbs than 10 slices of bread! So choose fish right? The Burger King BK Big Fish sandwich and fries has 1,000 calories -- nearly half of what most people are supposed to eat all day.

Five great fast food swaps -- eat a McDonald's Big Mac instead of a Burger king whopper with cheese and save 220 calories and 18 grams of fat. A fish sandwich at McDonald's beats BK's, saving 260 calories and 14 grams of fat. A chicken caesar salad at Panera is 560 calories, compared to Chili's, which has more than a thousand. A Taco Bell regular style steak burrito supreme has 390 calories. Chipotle's comes in at 1,126 calories, with 31 more grams of fat! Eat two slices of Domino's large cheese pizza instead of two slices of Pizza Hut large cheese pizza and save 100 calories and 10 grams of fat! For the record, a standard pizza in Italy has just 500 calories.

Meredith Luce, a dietician at Florida Hospital in Orlando says choosing healthy at your favorite fast food joint is just using common sense. "I'm going to have some french fries, but I'm going to have the smaller and I'm going to have the grilled chicken," she explained to Ivanhoe. "I'm not having the chicken fingers along with the french fries. That's like a double whammy. So the idea is to try and better balance it."

When it comes to balancing flavor, calories and fat, how does your favorite drive-through stack up? A report card based on calories and fat grams gives Chick-Fil-A an A plus! Not a single sandwich tops 500 calories! Subway and Boston Market also get good marks, while Panera and Pizza Hut barely pass.

So, before you grab your next meal, do your homework and know which choice is the healthiest choice at the drive-through.

It's just not fast food you have to watch out for. At the super market, a Pepperidge Farm roasted chicken pot pie doesn't sound too bad, but it comes in with 1,020 calories -- listed in the book as the worst meal sold in the supermarket!

For More Information, Contact:
www.menshealth.com

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

abc30 News Links:
Links to other news sections on our website.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Breaking News Alerts:
Click Here to Sign-Up for Breaking News E-Mail Alerts
Receive Breaking News alerts in your email inbox.

Click Here to Sign-Up for Text Message Alerts
Receive Breaking News alerts right on your cell phone.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------