Posted on 11/19/2010 9:09:26 AM PST by Red Badger
WASHINGTON - It's "food porn." That's what the Center for Science in the Public Interest dubbed the 1,030-calorie, deep-fried Lasagna Fritta appetizer at the Olive Garden.
The restaurant, known for its "bottomless" salad and breadsticks, made the consumer group's 2010 "Xtreme Eating Awards".
Other restaurants you frequent also made the list: P.F. Chang's, Five Guys, The Cheesecake Factory, California Pizza Kitchen, Outback, Chevy's and Bob Evans.
Two Cheesecake Factory dishes were also singled out. The pasta carbonara -- described as spaghettini with smoked bacon, green peas and a garlic-parmesan cream sauce -- is loaded with 2,500 calories and 60 grams of saturated fat. The chocolate truffle cake has 1,670 calories and 48 grams of saturated fat.
The group, which some call the food police, knocks Five Guys for its 700-calorie hamburger and its fries (620 calories for the small and 1,460 for the large). Five Guys is "no friend to your hips," CSPI says, pointing to the bacon cheeseburger and large fries adding up to 2,380 calories.
In issuing its awards, CSPI says two out of three adults and one third of children are now overweight or obese in America. Nearly 30 percent of young people are too heavy to join the military.
Restaurants are changing their ways, with more of them offering smaller portions or lower-calorie fare.
They're doing now that a U.S. healthcare law will require calorie counts to be posted on menus as early as next year.
(CNN.com) -- Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts. For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.
His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food. The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months. For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned. His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.
But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so. Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent. "That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?" Despite his temporary success, Haub does not recommend replicating his snack-centric diet. "I'm not geared to say this is a good thing to do," he said. "I'm stuck in the middle. I guess that's the frustrating part. I can't give a concrete answer. There's not enough information to do that."
Two-thirds of his total intake came from junk food. He also took a multivitamin pill and drank a protein shake daily. And he ate vegetables, typically a can of green beans or three to four celery stalks.
Families who live in food deserts have limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables, so they often rely on the kind of food Haub was eating. "These foods are consumed by lots of people," he said. "It may be an issue of portion size and moderation rather than total removal. I just think it's unrealistic to expect people to totally drop these foods for vegetables and fruits. It may be healthy, but not realistic."
Haub's body fat dropped from 33.4 to 24.9 percent. This posed the question: What matters more for weight loss, the quantity or quality of calories? His success is probably a result of caloric reduction, said Dawn Jackson Blatner, a dietitian based in Atlanta, Georgia. "It's a great reminder for weight loss that calories count," she said. "Is that the bottom line to being healthy? That's another story."
Blatner, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said she's not surprised to hear Haub's health markers improved even when he loaded up on processed snack cakes.
Being overweight is the central problem that leads to complications like high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol, she said. How well are you managing your diabetes? "When you lose weight, regardless of how you're doing it -- even if it's with packaged foods, generally you will see these markers improve when weight loss has improved," she said.
Before jumping on the Ding Dong bandwagon, Blatner warned of health concerns."There are things we can't measure," said Blatner, questioning how the lack of fruits and vegetables could affect long-term health. "How much does that affect the risk for cancer? We can't measure how diet changes affect our health." I was eating healthier, but I wasn't healthy. I was eating too much. --Professor Mark Haub
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Haub's sample day
Espresso, Double: 6 calories; 0 grams of fat
Hostess Twinkies Golden Sponge Cake: 150 calories; 5 grams of fat
Centrum Advanced Formula From A To Zinc: 0 calories; 0 grams of fat
Little Debbie Star Crunch: 150 calories; 6 grams of fat
Hostess Twinkies Golden Sponge Cake: 150 calories; 5 grams of fat
Diet Mountain Dew: 0 calories; 0 grams of fat
Doritos Cool Ranch: 75 calories; 4 grams of fat
Kellogg's Corn Pops: 220 calories; 0 grams of fat
whole milk: 150 calories; 8 grams of fat
baby carrots: 18 calories; 0 grams of fat
Duncan Hines Family Style Brownie Chewy Fudge: 270 calories; 14 grams of fat
Little Debbie Zebra Cake: 160 calories; 8 grams of fat
Muscle Milk Protein Shake: 240 calories; 9 grams of fat
Totals: 1,589 calories and 59 grams of fat
Had my first one last week. Never will a burger ever taste the same again.
If you want a burger worthy of food porn its:
L
Five guys is better, no joke
oooh baby baby
Finest smoked pork, chicken, duck and bacon(yes I know - Pork) in the world. None close IMHO.
Regards,
TS
I found a new one. Expensive as all get out but good. Its called Fogo de Chao. all you can eat steak, Lamb, and chicken. It did nothing for my cholesterol levels, but I enjoyed it immensely.
6) Dinosaur Barbecue- Syracuse>>>>>>>
George Soros and his sons bought into that business
Although it might be considered a culinary offense in Italy, their tiramisu cheesecake is pretty good, too.
That *is* a beautiful burger, my tongue gets a lift just looking at it........
That *is* a beautiful burger, my tongue gets a lift just looking at it........
I just checked out the Bacon Explosion and it looks delicious!
What these people do is tantamount to “science porn”.
Culver’s is my favorite.
Best fast food burger in WI.
Cheesecake Factory tiramisu cheesecake
Illinois, too.
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