Ah, good ol' summertime. Just the
mere word conjures up images of mounds of potato salad, corn on the cob dripping
with melted butter and ice cream cones melting in the hot sun, and snacking
on the back patio with a can of cold soda and a few potato chips.
Don't get me wrong. There's nothing out of whack with this picture... IF you're
an active 8 year old and have no problems with diabetes, high cholesterol
or sky-rocketing blood pressure. Yet if you're one of the many 40+ something
ladies I know, these issues are starting to become your reality. That's why
the title of this article is, "To Snack or Not to Snack... That is the
Question."
I did a little research just to see what the average American was bringing home in those brown paper grocery bags and I was VERY surprised at my findings. It does seem that more people are eating at home, but it's what they're eating that scares me.
For example, did you know that according to J. Scott Wilson, food editor for New York WNBC.com, the average American eats - get this! - 7 pounds of potato chips in a year? Yes, you read that right. S-e-v-e-n pounds of fat laden, cholesterol climbing, sodium packed crunches - per person! And even scarier is that fact that these statistics are the 'average', so what are 'most' people consuming?
Considering that the 2005 edition of the US Dietary Guidelines for Americans published by the US Department of Health and Human Services/US Department of Agriculture state that the recommended total fat intake be between 20 and 35 percent of daily calories for adults, let's look a bit closer at those potato chips.
The average package of Pringle's Regular Chips (visit http://www.pringles.com/pages/index.shtml and click on their nutrition information) suggests that a serving size be 1 ounce, which is approximately 14 chips. The calorie count of these few bites is a whopping 160, while the total fat count is 11 grams (17% of a daily 2000 calorie diet) with 3 grams of this being saturated fats (those 'nasty' ones that clog up your arteries faster than cooking oil being poured down your kitchen sink!) Plus the sodium count is shown as 170 mg or 7% of a recommended 2000 calorie per day diet.
So, what do all these numbers and gram counts boil down to?
Well, here are the facts. Again, according to the US Dietary Guidelines, we should consume less than 20 grams of saturated fat, less than 2300 mg of salt per day and less than 200 mg daily of cholesterol. By eating those 14 meager chips, (and who stops to count them out?) you've already exceeded your daily sodium by 100 grams, (hello high blood pressure, how are you?), and reached your DAILY maximum allowance of fat/cholesterol intake.
Wow! So are you just going to drink water for the rest of the day AFTER you've eaten those 14 chips? I hope so because you've definitely exceeded all your dietary intake for the day so there isn't any room to consume much more than zero calorie items like celery and good old fashioned water. I won't even begin to tell you what those precious few bites do to your waistline, but I'm sure you can 'do the math' all by yourself.
Am I telling you to never eat a single potato chip again? Certainly not. Am I telling you to beware of how many and how often you eat this snack? Most definitely. Ultimately we are what we eat, so watch what goes in your mouth very carefully.
As my tagline says, "If your lifestyle does not control your body, eventually your body will control your lifestyle!"
Until next issue, be happy AND healthy!
To Snack or Not To Snack...That is The Question