29 November 2007

Cheesecake Poppers

Sonic is a drive-up restaurant that advertises in my cable market. I'm not sure why; there isn't a Sonic within 50 miles of here. Their commercials are memorable, if nothing else. I'd categorize them as annoying, but maybe that's just me.

They've been showing ads for "cheesecake poppers" lately, which if you've escaped this phenomenon, are little bites of cheesecake, covered in a batter and deep-fried. Deep fried! Cheesecake is bad enough for you, but then deep frying it? Wow, holy calories, Batman. Probably just as bad for you as deep-frying Mac & Cheese. Sonic's website does not list the nutritional information for the cheesecake poppers, but I suspect that's because it is a new menu item and they haven't updated their website.

Then I saw a sign for the same thing at an Arby's.

No wonder America is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Deep-fried everything, mega sized meals, sugar bonanza sodas. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. I know that. I'm just astonished all over again at our wacky perception of portion size and what a reasonable daily caloric intake is.

On Tuesday, I was at a meeting held at a restaurant, a local family-owned sort of thing. Many restaurants of that stripe around here are Italian, but this one, I couldn't put a category to. Typical Yankee food, burgers, sandwiches, nutritionally worthless iceberg lettuce salads, a few grilled chicken/grilled fish things. I'd never been to this place before, and I ate prior to the meeting at home, where I can control what I'm getting and I know what is in everything I'm eating. (Control freak? Me?!? Surely, you jest.) I didn't know what I was walking in to there, so rather than take a chance, I just took out a little insurance that my tummy wouldn't be clamoring through the whole thing.

I ordered a cup, a CUP, mind you, of soup, so that I wasn't the only one without food in front of her, and they brought me a bowl that was perhaps six inches across and three inches deep, filled to the brim. If I had to guess, I'd estimate that there were two cups of food inside that bowl. That's their "cup" of soup. It was a vegetarian barley stew sort of thing, and delicious, and it set me to wondering if I could re-create it at home, but I ate perhaps a third of it. I shudder to think what a bowl of soup is to these people.

Being out in the community all day as I am for my new job, the temptations are myriad and near-devastating to my constant refrain of "do you need to eat that?" Fast food abounds, and sit-down restaurants take too long. I've discovered that if I drink coffee, I'm not as hungry and can wait for something to munch on until I get home. Decaf, of course, but I don't think it particularly wise to use that as a long-term plan. I haven't been smart enough yet to remember to put snacks in the car so I'm not ravenous.

I won' fall off the wagon; I'm far too OCD for that. I step on the scale a far more often than is healthy, checking constantly to make sure I haven't gained anything back from the bad eating habits that I have indulged in from time to time over the last month. The eating something crappy is only sporadic, but I worry about it regardless. I've worked too hard and too long to have it completely destroyed by our fast food nation.

The moral of the story? Read the labels, people.

2 comments:

LaNspeed said...

How bout you stop passing the blame to everyone else and look to yourself as the culript.

ITS CALLED EXCERISE!

Theres healthy things to eat you can already make and take with you.Laziness is to blame for obesity in America not fast food places.Also the portion size you which to obtain at said establishments is your choice.

Lucy Arin said...

Wow, is there some misplaced aggression here or is it just me?

If you bothered to read more than just this post, or if you in fact actually read this post, you would see that 1. I have an active exercise program, thankyouverymuch, 2. I am railing about the fact that deep-fried crap is cheap and healthy food is expensive and 3. making those "right choices" is something that all of us struggle with, every day.

Since you didn't leave your e-mail address and your Blogger profile is blank, that makes it difficult to follow up with rational discussion. But I'm guessing that rational discussion was never your intent. So much easier to spread vile malice and run away, no?

Your comment posted twice; that's too much negativity in my life, so I deleted one.