Shocking Nutritional Information

[Ohiodislover]

In California, a restaurant is now required to post nutritional information. We ate at Red Robin on Harbor Blvd. near DLR on our last trip; and WOW! The sodium in their food! I wish they would do that here in Nevada.

Say it's not soNope, I refuse to believe it. I prefer to live in denial. This is a family favorite at our house

 

[disfan07]

I guess I'm lucky regarding the sodium issue. I am not really supposed to watch my sodium intake at all. I hate salty food (think chips, popcorn, cheeze its, etc. ) and i buy low sodium everything but i am supposed to be eating a high sodium diet. I need to figure out how to get MORE sodium into my diet instead of less. haha

 

[MIGrandma]

I do a lot of label reading as well, and I was shocked to discover that many canned soups add sugar. Why soup needs sugar I do not know. I know I don't put it in my homemade soups.

 

[paintnolish]

I was about to mention Starbucks.

Anything in moderation is OK but some of these restaurant food are shocking. Fast food places get all of the criticism but you can often get healthier food at places like McD's or Wendy's.

It is a lot easier to make healthier decisions because the info is readily available at most places- on the wall at Wendy's and on the back of the tray liner at McD's.
Many restaurants don't have the info available or make "light" offers available on the menu, only the exact stats aren't that easy to find (maybe online).

 

[Lanshark]

Someone at the office had a yogurt with like 8g of sugar in it! I was surprised. I don't think of yogurt as a sugarry snack.

Some sugar is naturally occurring. Milk has 11 grams of sugar therefore dairy products are bound to have some sugar in them, I would think.

 

[Kath2003]

Some sugar is naturally occurring. Milk has 11 grams of sugar therefore dairy products are bound to have some sugar in them, I would think.

True, natural yoghurt does indeed have sugar occurring naturally within it. But as soon as you add flavourings to yoghurt, or alter its consistency, the calories pile on.

In terms of eating out, I've never been surprised. Eating out is indulgent. A lot of the time, so is the food.

 

[Free4Life11]

Do you know that normal baking powder has anywhere from 55mg to 200 mg of sodium in just an 1/8 of a tsp (depending on the brand)? I buy Hain Featherweight Baking Powder which is sodium free.

What's so bad about that? I mean if I make some cookies it may call for 1/4 tsp baking powder, but it spreads out so maybe only 15 or 20 mg per cookie, not bad at all.

 

[Colleen27]

I avoid food additives, so the big label shockers for me have been in all the things that contain high fructose corn syrup, even things we don't think of as sweet. It is the first or second ingredient in every single brand of non-organic BBQ sauce the local grocery carries, its in every mainstream brand of crackers and ketchup, with yogurt you have the choice of aspartame or HFCS unless you buy organic, etc.

 

[bas71873]

I just read this whole thread.....and I'm still going to go bake homemade M&M cookies with DD. And I'm not going to feel one bit guilty about it (yeah right)

 

[paintnolish]

I just read this whole thread.....and I'm still going to go bake homemade M&M cookies with DD. And I'm not going to feel one bit guilty about it (yeah right)

Don't forget to eat the dough!

 

[LisaR]

What's so bad about that? I mean if I make some cookies it may call for 1/4 tsp baking powder, but it spreads out so maybe only 15 or 20 mg per cookie, not bad at all.

I've never made a batch of cookies using only a 1/4 tsp of baking powder. If you use 1 tsp, which I think is very common for a batch of cookies, you would end up with 440mg to 1600 mg of salt per dozen of cookies (depending on the brand you use). That comes out to 36mg of salt in one cookie to 133mg salt in one cookie. Most people don't think that they are consuming salt in a cookie. Sugar? Heck yeah. Salt.....not so much. If you are good with that, more power to you. I prefer my cookies salt free.

 

[themarquis]

Even if you mix your own, the yogurt probably has close to 10-12g of sugars. The biggest source of sugars in yogurt (IIRC) is lactose, as well as any naturally occuring sugars in any added fruit. Some yogurts will have table sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, of course. Reading the label is important.

I just had to respond to the yogurt issue, because what you said is not totally correct.

I'm now on a moderately-low carb diet for health issues. I buy PLAIN, unsweetened yogurt and add fresh fruit. Some fruits (like berries) have very few carbs and have a negligable impact on the carb count of the yogurt. Depending on how sweet the fruit is, I might also add a drizzle of honey, but I try to avoid it. In any case, that drizzle provides a much smaller amount of carb than the sugar-stuffed flavored yogurts.

It is usually whole milk yogurt, which is delicious and not as tart as fat-free (and not very different in calories, surprisingly). It's a bit of the shock to the palate if you're used to all that crappy corn syrup laden "yogurt" but you get used to it pretty quickly.

Another interesting thing about yogurt is that most of the carbs in it from milk (lactose) are not useable by the body as carbs. A lot of folks don't know this. The bacteria have "digested" the carbs to some extent so that they don't "work" like carbs in the body. There's no way to say exactly what the "real" carb count of plain yogurt is, but it is pretty darn low.

 

[Liberty Belle]

Say it's not soNope, I refuse to believe it. I prefer to live in denial. This is a family favorite at our house

Oh it's sad, isn't it? Red Robin is one of the worst as far as calories, fat, and sodium go. We ate there once and it was delicious. Sometime later I looked up the nutritional info and was floored! Haven't been back since.

 

[OceanAnnie]

I was eating and enjoying a small individual size bag of Cheezits. It was about 150 calories for the bag. Not woeful. But the fat calories were 100! So that kinda squished the enjoyment factor.

I knew they tasted too good.

 

[jlima]

Say it's not soNope, I refuse to believe it. I prefer to live in denial. This is a family favorite at our house

The USDA sez your daily sodium should be no more than 2,400 mg of sodium.

From Red Robin's website, a cup of french onion soup has 1,412 mg sodium; and a cobb salad with balsamic vinagrette is 2,771 mg sodium. Yep, a soup and a salad has over 4,000 mg of sodium.

http://www.redrobin.com/food/

 

[John VN]

The USDA sez your daily sodium should be no more than 2,400 mg of sodium.

From Red Robin's website, a cup of french onion soup has 1,412 mg sodium; and a cobb salad with balsamic vinagrette is 2,771 mg sodium. Yep, a soup and a salad has over 4,000 mg of sodium.

http://www.redrobin.com/food/

I read an article in a medical journal given to me some years ago by my DR. who is a very close friend and the consensus was that the daily sodium intake should be 1500mg not 2400mg. Testing was done on 2 groups and while the 2000mg group did have a reduction in BP, the group restricted to 1500mg had a substantially greater BP reduction.

I use no added salt in the preparation of my meals. Herbs and spices can really make an interest dish when used properly and can also be very beneficial to better health.