• Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 237 other subscribers

  • Noshing on

    raw blueberry pie with microwaveable filling and graham cracker crust

    This mostly-raw blueberry pie is a snap to make and very versatile--the filling microwaves in a few minutes, and you don't even have to bake the zippy gingered graham cracker crust--perfect for a hot Fourth of July and all summer long.

  • Recent Posts

  • Contents

  • Archives

  • Now Reading

  • The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It

  • See also my Book Reviews

  • Copyright 2008-2022Slow Food Fast. All writing and images on this blog unless otherwise attributed or set in quotes are the sole property of Slow Food Fast. Please contact DebbieN via the comments form for permissions before reprinting or reproducing any of the material on this blog.

  • ADS AND AFFILIATE LINKS

  • I may post affiliate links to books and movies that I personally review and recommend. Currently I favor Alibris and Vroman's, our terrific and venerable (now past the century mark!) independent bookstore in Pasadena. Or go to your local library--and make sure to support them with actual donations, not just overdue fines (ahem!), because your state probably has cut their budget and hours. Again.

  • In keeping with the disclaimer below, I DO NOT endorse, profit from, or recommend any medications, health treatments, commercial diet plans, supplements or any other such products.

  • DISCLAIMER

  • SlowFoodFast sometimes addresses general public health topics related to nutrition, heart disease, blood pressure, and diabetes. Because this is a blog with a personal point of view, my health and food politics entries often include my opinions on the trends I see, and I try to be as blatant as possible about that. None of these articles should be construed as specific medical advice for an individual case. I do try to keep to findings from well-vetted research sources and large, well-controlled studies, and I try not to sensationalize the science (though if they actually come up with a real cure for Type I diabetes in the next couple of years, I'm gonna be dancing in the streets with a hat that would put Carmen Miranda to shame. Consider yourself warned).

Chain-restaurant excess strikes again

Posted on June 5, 2015 by DebbieN

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has found itself swamped for choice in its 2015 Xtreme Eating “awards” list.

What’s the highest calorie chain-restaurant meal in America? (LA Times online, 6/3/15)

The entries are frightening–typically 1-2 days’ worth of calories, 3 days’ worth of saturated fat and sodium, huge oversized amounts of food. One steakhouse platter with so much hamburger meat–not even steak–seven burgers, each piece topped with cheese or at least cheez–it’s like eating several Double Whoppers at once. Ice cream float-type concoctions with no actual pie but pie crust pieces crumbled on them. They start at 32 ounces. Which is clearly the new 20 ounces if you actually read through the horrible meal descriptions, because another chain’s sweet tea is only offered in a 32 oz size as well. That’s a quart. For one person. There’s a 900-calorie margarita in there somewhere at 24 ounces.

I’m sure Michael Jacobson, CSPI’s president, never dreamed there’d be something fully twice as bad on any restaurant menu as fettucine Alfredo, which he termed “a heart attack on a plate” only what, 20 or so years ago?

What the hell is going on here?  The chains may be cutting down slightly on artificial colors and trans-fats and GMO ingredients, but they’re serving meals with an entire day’s worth of calories embedded in the endless parade of glop that is routinely slathered on otherwise reasonable-sounding main ingredients like chicken breast (note: a top offender for hidden sodium in the “healthy” chain offerings, especially on salads). “Special” sauces, breadings, cheese, frying oil, stuffings, dips, and less-announced coatings (the problem with the chicken) that add surprising amounts of sweet, salt and/or fat. Chipotle isn’t on CSPI’s wall of shame over this, but it’s just as true of them as of any of the others–their meals typically run 500-800 calories for a burrito without chips, guacamole or salsa (not to mention sour cream and added cheese), and the same number of milligrams of sodium.

The meal insults listed on CSPI’s site consist of huge portions that could more normally serve four people, not one. Dishes are never less than 3″ high and cover every square millimeter of the plate. Burgers are multiplied–if one or two are okay, six or seven must be even better. Vegetables have disappeared, of course.

Accessories double or triple the calorie, fat and sodium counts of the full “meal”: caesar salad, fries, biscuits, half-gallon drinks, whole quarts of ice-cream-related desserts. Why is this gargantuan approach even appealing?

They didn’t list Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors, but maybe they should have–a couple of years ago I took my daughter there for a post-diabetes-diagnosis ice cream cone so we could do something normal for summer, albeit with a shot of insulin (it was a new experience) and we got the entire brochure of offerings when we asked for the nutrition info. The single cone, no lightweight for any of the flavors at about 250-300 calories (double or triple what it would be for Dreyer’s/Edy’s half-the-fat, our standby) and 25-30 grams of carb (also double the D/E per serving), turned out to be a best bet. Some of the sundaes were getting to the 20 oz. range, with over 1500 calories and two days’ worth of carb and fat. The soft serves were actually the worst nutritionally, much higher in calories, carb and fat than they look for the volume you get–and especially given how plain the flavors always are.

Overall, the picture of chain food is not lookin’ good. It’s a nightmare of shameful, pointless stuntlike excess, the stuff parodied in Wall-E and Idiocracy among other movies from the past decade. Only as one of the CSPI judges remarked, it’s become the new normal, and much faster than the screenwriters imagined. Maybe we should all look at the before pictures of the participants on The Biggest Loser, as shown in all the accompanying guidebooks (see your local Friends of the Library bookstore) and ask ourselves if we really want to do that. Because that’s a lot of work.

Filed under: Diabetes, Eating out, Food Politics, nutrition, unappetizing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Chain-restaurant excess strikes again

A Closer look at Einstein Bros. Bagels

Posted on March 24, 2011 by DebbieN

A few weeks ago I bought a challah from Einstein Bros. Bagels, which had taken over from the Noah’s in my town sometime last fall. Noah’s had supplied my daughter’s school on Fridays and their challah was pretty good for store-bought–this tasted the same. I hadn’t been in the store since the takeover so I didn’t really know what to expect, but other than the name change outside, it looked the same and had more or less the same offerings as ever.

I’m not sure what prompted me to go online and look for their nutrition information sheet, but I wanted an idea of what was in the challah, so I looked. I couldn’t find it on the Einstein Bros. site, but there was a pointer to the Noah’s web site–still up after the takeover, apparently, and that had the challah listed. What I found for the challah itself wasn’t incredibly shocking or anything, ingredients more or less kosher, not too bad on any of the nutritional factors. In fact, it’s probably one of the best bets at our former Noah’s, although you have to order a couple days ahead for Friday morning pickup.

On the other hand, the bagels and other menu items really stood out for sodium–most were over 500 mg per bagel, and some of the “gourmet” varieties of bagels were in the 700-900 range, even without lox. A few sandwiches soared as high as 3500 mg sodium (more than a day’s worth even for today’s average intake, and about two days’ worth according to the CDC and AHA guidelines)–just for a sandwich. Anything with chicken on it was astronomical as well–above 1600. Which sounded like Denny’s or Chili’s to me.

I started to wonder just who designed the food and how “designed” it was. Were we talking mostly bagel joint, or were we talking fast food with a highly engineered, set-in-stone formulation? If I wanted to contact them to ask about lowering the sodium in their dishes, was there a real person I could talk to?

The Einstein’s web site doesn’t have a lot on it other than Flash bells and whistles–the site is extremely corporate as far as information goes. The only thing I found that seemed worth noting here is the management team, and even that–maybe it was the Flash, or maybe there was some programming in the web site, but after three management biographies it failed to load any others. I had to shut my browser, clear my cache, and try again.

What I found surprised me (I’m kind of naïve, I know it). Even with all the evidence to the contrary–my sister once did a comprehensive marketing survey of west coast bagelries and concluded none of them had the real, crackle-crusted thing, it was all just ring-shaped white bread–I still harbor a faint hope that if it’s a bagel shop, it must be Jewish. Especially since the founder of Noah’s is, and Einstein Bros.–well, what would you conclude? But you would be wrong. Continue reading →

Filed under: breads, DASH Diet, Eating out, Food Politics, nutrition | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Closer look at Einstein Bros. Bagels

Suing for Salt

Posted on July 24, 2009 by DebbieN

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is supporting a New Jersey man’s class action lawsuit against Denny’s Restaurants after private talks apparently failed to convince the chain to lower the exaggeratedly high sodium content in its meals. Apparently CSPI combed through the nutrition data on the Denny’s web site. A couple of sample readings:

Denny’s double cheeseburger–3880 mg
Denny’s Meat Lover’s Scramble–5,690 mg
Denny’s “senior” menu scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese meal–2,060 mg
Spicy Buffalo Chicken Melt, and a side of seasoned fries–6700 mg sodium, 1700 calories

The lawsuit was filed in Superior Court of New Jersey in Middlesex County, and seeks to compel Denny’s to disclose on menus the amount of sodium in each of its meals and to place a notice on its menus warning about high sodium levels.

Filed under: DASH Diet, Eating out, Food Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Comments Off on Suing for Salt