A few years ago, my roommate asked his his mother (a nurse) for a book on nutrition. She got him a book that was basically a pictorial guide to calorie counts, which is not what he wanted. However, I now realize that I should have borrowed that book, because now that restaurants have to tell you how many calories their dishes have, I’m learning exactly how much I’ve been overeating over the years.
For instance, I went to Islands and discovered my usual chicken breast sandwich is 1,000 calories. Nothing particularly evil about it: mayo, Swiss, mushrooms, lettuce, and tomato. Not breaded and deep fried, no bacon, no avocado. That doesn’t even include the 480 calories for the side of fries it comes with. In other news, Islands (like Red Robin) now offers bottomless fries with their meals, and will happily oblige your request for a side of ranch dressing. So with a second helping of fries, you get 2,000 calories in one meal. More if you get the bottomless Coke. That’s all your calories for the day, consumed in 30 minutes. Insane. I made a 5 oz. turkey burger at home, a smaller version of the above sandwich, and it still came to 480 calories.
If coffee shops had to list calories in the pastry case, their sales would plummet. They’re about 500-900 calories and half of that is fat. Plus the coffee, which is probably a whole milk latte with syrup. This time you only had half a day’s calories as a between meal snack.
Bottom line: everything is horrible for you, and twice as bad if you’re sedentary.