Posted on 08/26/2007 1:56:08 PM PDT by SamAdams76
The "hot doughnut experience." That's the difference between Krispy Kreme and other large doughnut chains. Dunkin' Donuts may be bigger (at least in the East), but nothing stirs the soul like the neon "Hot Doughnuts Now" sign that lights up when Krispy Kreme's famous Original Glazeds come rolling off the line.
If you've ever had a doughnut hot out of the fryer, you know how tough it is to stop at just one. Just what we need: an irresistible food that's made of sugarcoated white flour fried in trans-fat-laden oil.
Doughnuts are a phenomenon. Fortune magazine recently named the rapidly expanding Krispy Kreme "America's Hottest Brand." The company racked up two billion media mentions in 2002, according to Amy Joyner, coauthor of Making Dough: The 12 Secret Ingredients of" Krispy Kreme's Sweet Success (Wiley, 2003).
It's not just taste. It's not just the "Hot Doughnuts Now" sign, which works as a "strong impulse purchase generator." And it's not just what Krispy Kreme calls "doughnut theater"--the "multi-sensory experience" that engulfs customers as they watch the doughnuts come off the assembly line.
Krispy Kreme has a brilliant marketing strategy. It delivers flee doughnuts to local leaders, charities, and reporters as it moves into a community. And the media, in turn, fuel the Krispy Kreme craze.
"When a store comes to town--any town--it's treated like a news event, from the time its plans pass the zoning board to its meticulously razzmatazzed grand opening," writes Jill Rosen in the October/November 2003 American Journalism Review.
Surprisingly, Krispy Kreme's success isn't hurting its competitors. "It's created an awareness for the category, and we're benefiting," Dunkin' Donuts CEO Jon Luther told Newsweek magazine in September.
The competition doesn't hurt in part because each chain attracts a different clientele. Commuters stop at Dunkin' Donuts on their way to work, while customers visit Krispy Kreme for a splurge. (They can buy the identical KK doughnuts at the supermarket.)
Meanwhile, Tim Hortons, Canada's top doughnut chain, has started to make its way across the border. Which raises the question: are we poised to follow our neighbors to the north, who consume more doughnuts per capita than any other nation on earth?
And what will our growing fondness for doughnuts do to our insides and backsides? To find out, we looked at the calories, saturated fat, trans fat, and sugar in the most popular doughnuts from the two leading chains. (Most numbers came from the companies; we analyzed the percentage of trans in the doughnuts' fat.)
If doughnuts hold a warm place in your heart, read on: not all doughnuts are created equal. Some are twice as damaging as others.
KRISPY KREME
The good news: the most popular doughnut at Krispy Kreme, the Original Glazed, isn't as bad as most of the chain's other doughnuts. The bad news: they're so light and airy that stopping after only one ain't easy.
It's not the 200 calories that'll get you (though 200 times two, three, or four sure might). It's the six grams of saturated-plus-trans fat. That's nearly a third of a day's worth of bad fat in every ring. It's like eating a slice of white bread smeared with a tablespoon of lard (plus a tablespoon of jelly).
A Sugar Coated or Glazed Cinnamon--or Glazed or Cinnamon Twist--will do about the same damage. Even the Chocolate Iced looks the same to your arteries. (The chocolate icing is mostly sugar, so it adds about 50 calories, but no more fat.)
What pumps up the calories, fat, and sugar in Krispy Kreme's filled doughnuts? They're heavier. Krispy offers more than a dozen varieties that do away with the doughnut's healthiest feature: its calorie-free, fat-free hole.
Filled yeast doughnuts--including New York Cheesecake, Chocolate Malted Kreme, Caramel Kreme Crunch, Key Lime Pie, and Chocolate Iced Creme Filled--pack 300 to 390 calories and eight to ten grams of harmful fat. Some weigh nearly twice as much as an Original Glazed. Eating one is like having a nine-ounce filet mignon to tide you over until lunch.
Experienced consumers know better than to expect actual fruit in a fruit-filled doughnut. At Krispy Kreme, though, you never know. You get apples in the Cinnamon Apple Filled, but no raspberries in any of the Raspberries. To Krispy, "raspberry" means sugar, gums, artificial flavor, and a finely tuned mix of Red #40 and Blue #1 food coloring.
And the Glazed Blueberry (cake) doughnut uses nothing but corn cereal, corn syrup, and enough Blue #2, Red #40, Blue #1, and Green #3 to make "blueberry gumbits." Yum.
The blueberries may be missing, but the calories aren't. Whether it's Blueberry, Sour Cream, or Devil's Food, each Glazed cake doughnut packs 340 calories, seven teaspoons of corn syrup, and half a day's artery-clogging fat--nearly twice what you'd get in an Original Glazed. That's because glazed cake doughnuts--despite their holes--weigh as much as most filled doughnuts.
DUNKIN' DONUTS
Dunkin' Donuts is big in the East. In Massachusetts, they say that the best way to get someone lost is to tell them to turn left at the Dunkin' Donuts
The company's numbers illustrate one of the General Principles of Dunkin' Donuts Differences: cake is worse than yeast. Yeast doughnuts range from 170 to 270 calories and three to six grams of saturated-plus-trans fat. In contrast, cake doughnuts range from 290 to 360 calories and seven to 10 grams of bad fat.
At Dunkin', the Glazed and Sugar Raised yeast doughnuts leave you with only three grams of saturated-plus-trans fat. That's half what you'd get from Krispy Kreme's Original Glazed or Sugar Coated doughnuts. (Don't use that as an excuse to have two.) Dunkin's Apple N' Spice doughnuts also keep the bad fat to three grams. But it's not because all those apples leave less room for fat. The doughnuts have more yeast than apple.
The Frosted yeast doughnuts--Chocolate, Marble, Strawberry, and Maple--are still on the lowish side, with four grams of heart trouble and roughly 200 calories. But the frosting lifts the sugar to about three teaspoons' worth.
The bad fat inches up to five grams in the Crumb doughnuts. Dunkin' springs for real apples in the Apple Crumb, but it must have gotten a good deal on strawberry puree, because that's the only berry in the Blueberry Crumb. Nothing that a little Red #40, Yellow #6, and Blue #1 food dye can't take care of.
"Kreme" doughnuts are filled with partially hydrogenated oils, sugar, gums, and artificial flavor rather than cream, but that's not exactly good news. Each Chocolate or Vanilla Kreme Filled will run you 270 calories, six grams of artery-lining fat, and four teaspoons of sugar.
Still, those numbers look good next to the cake doughnuts. The "best" cake (Chocolate Glazed) is worse than the worst yeast (Vanilla Kreme Filled). Even a plain Old Fashioned Cake has 300 calories and half a day's bad fat. It's a good way to get ready for an Old Fashioned Heart Attack. In the Glazed version, the sugar climbs to five teaspoons and the calories to 350.
Among the worst cake doughnuts is the Cinnamon Cake. Its 10 grams of heart-stopping fat are more than twice what you'd get in a Chocolate Frosted yeast doughnut.
Too bad Dunkin' doesn't put those numbers up on its menu board. Instead, it's got a deal for you: one doughnut will cost you around 75 cents, but you can get a dozen for about 30 cents each. Krispy Kreme has a similar incentive to weaken your willpower. And the variety--you can mix and match most flavors--entices people to keep eating.
There are Dunkin' Donuts in Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and a few dozen other countries. And you can find Krispy Kreme in Asia, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Mexico, and Eastern and Western Europe.
Doughnuts are a worldwide phenomenon. So are obesity and heart disease.
In a trans
Most doughnuts have two to five grams of trans fat--plus another two to five grams of saturated fat. That's 20 to 50 percent of a day's worth of bad fat (20 grams). Here's how doughnuts (in bold) stack up against some other foods.
Just remember: Eating more than one Cinnabon is tough. Eating more than one doughnut is easy...
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Get off I-20 at Hearne Ave, you can't miss it. If your traveling west take right or left going east
Sorry haven’t had it in years.
I just had fond memories because my grgrand parents had a hog farm and had fresh lard!
I must say not offen for the farm was in NY and I lived in Michigan and my grand mother had slabs of it certain times of year and made great pies!
****
Lard: The New Health Food?
Startled by news about the dangers of trans fats, writer Pete Wells happily contemplates the return of good old-fashioned lard.
http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/lard-the-new-health-food
organic lard
http://www.google.com/search?q=organic+lard&revid=1246322260&sa=X&oi=revisions_inline&resnum=0&ct=broad-revision&cd=3
Going back to lard for old-time pies
http://www.boston.com/ae/food/articles/2006/07/19/going_back_to_lard_for_old_time_pies?mode=PF
Thanks ;-)
Where did I say lard and getting fat was a good thing? Trans fats were put into foods as a preservative and they clog arteries no matter how much you watch your weight and exercise.
I want to know what I’m eating so I can make reasonable choices. If Jason’s Deli is trans-fat free, they get my money. If Taco Bueno refuses to make the change, they lost a customer.
Will you be so kind as to volunteer to do my eulogy when my ticket is punched...LOL
Sam, HFCS is made up of glucose and fructose just like sucrose (sugar). Your body cannot tell the difference between glucose and fructose from sucrose or glucose and fructose from HFCS....nor does it care.
Adding hydrogen (a natural occurring element) to vegetable oil in no way creates something your body cannot identify or metabolize. Trans fats are cleared by the liver. Your liver learns to break down complex compounds created by pharmaceutical companies that it has never seen before. To say that trans fats and HFCS are unknown to the body and that the body cannot clear them is absurd.
We are better off with the foods that our species have had for the past several thousand years.
About 80% of the foods we eat today have been genetically modified in some way since the beginning of time. Are you saying we shouldn't be allowed to consume any of them because they're not structured the same as they were thousands of years ago?
Since I cut those two things (HFCS and trans-fats) out of my diet, I have lost over 100 pounds and kept most of it off for the past four years. As well, the obesity epidemic roughly correlates to the introduction of those man-made substances.
I once saw a study that directly correlated the price of peanuts in the U.S. with the amount of rainfall in Fiji. There are all kinds of silly correlations out there and one guy even wrote a book listing them all. The reason you've lost weight is simply because you're burning more calories than you consume. You're trying to complicate an issue that isn't all that difficult to understand. It has nothing to do with HFCS or trans fats. That's all in your head and cannot be supported by science. Of course, that's never stopped people from blaming everything but the real source of the problem.
Trans fats are used for many more reasons than just extending the life of a product. They also add flavor and texture. Good luck getting a flaky crust from butter. Saturated fat can clog your arteries too. Less than 2% of the average American's diet is made up of trans fat while we get 12-15% of our calories from saturated fats. If you're consistent, you'll be advocating for the banning of saturated fat too.
The fact is that for the vast majority of people who suffer from high cholesterol, diet will do little to control their problem. Even if they cut out fats and cholesterol they have a gene that tells their liver to make up the difference. Only with drugs can this be controlled.
I want to know what I’m eating so I can make reasonable choices.
That's a reasonable request. Unfortunately, most people who demand this information don't have the foggiest notion of what it means.
If Jason’s Deli is trans-fat free, they get my money. If Taco Bueno refuses to make the change, they lost a customer.
Watch our for those natural trans-fats that occur in meats and dairy. Any restaurant saying they are trans-fat free will probably get sued in the future. Anyway, eliminating those trans fats while eating saturated fat won't do you much good. But I guess feeling that you're doing something beneficial for your health counts for something....even if you aren't.
Bump. Dunkin Donuts opened here a year or two ago, had an excellent location but still folded in 6 months.
Folks here will drive to Tallahassee to get KK hot out of the grease.
We we so skinny mom used to send Ethiopeans pictures of us so they wouldn't fell so bad.
We ate fried foods (chicken or fish), oranges, apples, carrots, biscuits, corn and vegetables, cornbread, cakes, pies and at least 2 huge glasses of milk every day. Not to mention all the syrupy sweet tea we could swallow.
Hitting 40 we all start eating 'healthy' - and the pounds pile on.
I was born and raised in Connecticut. Moved after enlisting in the Army in 1978. Now live in Central Coastal California. Why do you ask?? Sorry about the delay responding to you. Been out of town on business.
Outside the northeast rust belt, being antiunion is a given. Naming oneself as such appears to be a redundancy for anyone not from there. Additionally, I don’t see Krispy Kreme closing up shops or going under. Again, that sounds like something a denizen of the northeast would say, Krispy Kreme being a southern thing and all.
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