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    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.

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Sorry, Starbucks, no doughnut

Posted on May 3, 2010 by DebbieN

On Sunday mornings, my daughter likes to drag her father out around the corner without me to the local Starbucks so he can buy himself coffee and get her some kind of small baked good that I’m not supposed to know about. Because I am, in fact, generally opposed to “doughnuts for breakfast” and both of them know it. It’s a ritual that had to be suspended for a while this spring, until we could figure out what kind of treat had how many grams of carbohydrate and how much of it she could eat and still eat something else more nutritious as the majority of breakfast.

Most of the pastries will never be what I consider top baking, but it’s not me who’s going to eat them. And my daughter wanted a doughnut, or part of a doughnut, if she could make it work out.

So–I went online to the Starbucks web site to try and hash out the vagaries of “petite” mini scones, mini doughnuts, coffee cake slices, and all the rest of it. Starbucks markets itself to the upscale, the midscale, and the would-be midscale of my town with all kinds of brochures about fair trade and global responsibility, and their web site is not much different. The do-right message is right up there with the latte of the week, and you’d expect the nutrition info to be present and helpful without the usual twisty chain-restaurant disguises and trickery.

Or would you? Starbucks got its tail caught several years ago when numerous commentators, among them its own employees, let the public know that some of the lattes and other mixed coffee drinks were topping out at over 700 calories per, with more fat than some burger chain offerings. Since then Starbucks has offered more health-conscious choices below the pastry case and taken a pro-active posture on nutrition and informing the customer and so on. But how do they really feel?

The nutrition info page falls under the “menus” navigation item at the top. OK. It’s readable, not a shrunken PDF file–good. You find a long scrolling list of each of the bakery items with calories, fat, carbs, and proteins. Doughnut, doughnut–old-fashioned glazed doughnut…440 calories, 21 grams of fat (10 saturated), 57 grams of carb…Ouch. Well, she could have half of one, I suppose, with a small bowl of oatmeal and some milk, and eat something better at lunch…but wait a minute. Where’s the sodium info?

All I could find about sodium was a little note about “healthy choices”, in which the Starbucks nutrition page asserts that such items have fewer than 10 grams of fat and fewer than 600 mg sodium. A stunner–that’s more than the classic 500-mg bowl of Campbell’s Tomato Soup that caused all the corporate protests against the NIH dietary salt guidelines in the 1980s. Who on earth would claim 600 mg sodium for a single snack or breakfast item was “healthy”–especially with the growing public and government concern over excessive salt in restaurant food?

And I still couldn’t find any specific sodium stats for doughnuts or mini scones or the other things my daughter was hoping for, much less an ingredients list. So I searched a variety of diet and nutrition web sites that catalog such things. The closest I could get to a current verified  standard nutrition label was from livestrong.com (accessed 5/3/10):

Starbucks Top Pot Old-Fashioned Glazed Doughnut

Serving Size: 1 Pastry (113g) Calories 480 Calories from Fat 210

  • Total Fat 23g 35%
  • Saturated Fat 9g 45%
  • Trans Fat 0g
  • Cholesterol 20mg 7%
  • Sodium 410mg 17%
  • Total Carbohydrate 64g 21%
  • Dietary Fiber 0.5g 2%
  • Sugars 39g
  • Protein 4g 8%
  • Vitamin A0%
  • Vitamin C 0%
  • Calcium 2%
  • Iron 10%

Est. Percent of Calories from: Fat 43.1% Carbs 53.3% Protein 3.3%

These stats are higher than what’s stated at the Starbucks page (see below). And the sodium in a single doughnut is pretty high. So’s the carb. So’s the fat. So’s the increase in size and calorie stats and so on from the glazed doughnuts they were offering in 2006, according to archived nutrition labels on a number of older diet web sites. Continue reading →

Filed under: Desserts, Eating out, kid food, nutrition, unappetizing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sorry, Starbucks, no doughnut

Naked Lunch: Nutrition labeling law in effect for California Chain Restaurants

Posted on July 1, 2009 by DebbieN

California’s not the first state or municipality to require restaurants to declare their nutritional stats to customers, but as of today, the state will require chains with more than 20 in-state locations to post calories, carbs, sodium and fat information for each menu offering. The new law also bans sales of soda and junk foods to students at public schools–a big step toward reducing empty calories and sodium consumption among children and teens.

Patt Morrison of Pasadena-based public radio station KPCC interviewed the California Restaurant Association’s senior vice president for government affairs and the executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

Surprisingly enough, the CRA’s representative said the association actually backs the legislation in its current form. When asked whether similar New York City legislation had had any effect so far, the CCPHA director said it had–chain restaurants had started reformulating popular high-calorie foods back downward. He also gave demographics: 89 percent of Democrats and 78 percent of Republicans polled said they were in favor of the new law. Most of the callers to the show also said they wanted or needed to know what was at the end of their forks.  A fascinating interview all the way around.

Filed under: DASH Diet, Eating out, Food Politics, kid food, nutrition | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Naked Lunch: Nutrition labeling law in effect for California Chain Restaurants