With two out of three Americans overweight today, itâ ™s getting harder to believe that all this extra fat is a simple problem of self-indulgence or poor personal discipline.
In fact, researchers and clinicians from various sciences say unequivocally that itâ ™s not. Certainly adults are responsible for what they put in their mouths. But when so many are affected, from all across the American demographic, we have to also look whatâ ™s going on in our culture at large.
And one thing thatâ ™s going on is that thereâ ™s a lot more going out. In 1978, just 18 percent of the calories Americans consumed were eaten away from home. But by 2003, that was up to half.
Why should that even matter? A calorie is a calorie is a calorie, right?
At the bottom line, yes. The trouble is that when we eat out, we simply have much less control over what ends up on our plates, and from there, on our bottom line. That shows up in a variety of ways.
INShape Indiana: Ask the Nutritionist::
to include the amount of sodium in the food you consume when dining out. In this way, you will find out how many calories you are currently consuming.
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CaloriesCount.com::
if you find yourself dining out for almost every meal? Hope: In regard to travel, getting some exercise is a good way to counteract the higher calories.
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Nutritional research indicates that for almost any given dish that you might choose to prepare at home, when itâ ™s compared to a restaurant dish of the same name, itâ ™s often not the same thing at all. So even trying to consciously select what looks like the healthiest choice on the menu might not do you much good.
Restaurants tend to use more oils and fats, more sugar, and more salt in their food preparations. The reason is simple: if the food is yummy, youâ ™ll come back! But that tends to add up to a lot of extra calories you werenâ ™t counting on.
And speaking of extras, how about all those extra nibbles: the plates of appetizers, the baskets of warm bread with pots of cool butter, the bonus beverage specials? Most families simply donâ ™t have all those edible accoutrements with regular home meals.
But at a restaurant, your drinks are brought before you even order. You often get bread or rolls to eat during your wait, and appetizers and desserts are helpfully suggested by your server.
Yet those extras can have even more calories than your meals! An order of buffalo wings with blue cheese dressing? Thatâ ™s a tidy 1,010 calories before dinner. For a fried onion blossom with dip, figure around 2,000. Even a basket of garlic bread is about 800 calories. How many people are sharing those calories at your table?
Then you get to the main attraction, and the major problem with dining outâ ”portion size! Restaurant meals are often three to four times larger than a normal serving size.
Even plates, glassware and utensils have grown. Very often, the dinner plate you get in a restaurant would qualify as a platter in any home kitchen, but then, they have to be bigger to accommodate those super servings!
It wouldnâ ™t be such an issue if we were better at walking away. An old adage about fitness says that the most important exercise to do is â śpushbacks,â ť as in, when youâ ™ve had enough, push back and get up from the table.
But research shows that Americans in general tend to be â ścompleters,â ť and many of us were raised to feel a sense of guilt if we left food on our plates. Add that programming to a giant dish of pasta, and suddenly, youâ ™re stuffed!
The truth is, no matter how were raised, or whether were slim or fat, if more is put in front of us well eat more, period. And usually, were not even particularly aware of it. This has been proven out by study after study, in both the United States and abroad.
And thats not all. The research also shows that as we become accustomed to those mega-sized meals weâ ™re presented in restaurants, we tend to prepare bigger portions at home, as well. We may not use all the extra oil, salt and sugar that restaurants do, but weâ ™re certainly having more of our main ingredients, and weâ ™re eating big and hearty.
The other thing that restaurants have over the home meal is variety. Even the most accommodating home cook typically wonâ ™t make a different special meal for each member of the family. Again, the nutritional research shows that the more different things you can have, the more youâ ™ll eat overall.
United States Department of Agriculture studies showed that when offered three varieties of a given food itemâ ”say, sandwiches or cookiesâ ”people would eat more than if they were offered three items of the same variety. Thatâ ™s part of why those all-you-can-eat buffets are such a caloric catastrophe. Who ever has just a little?
Given the demands of todayâ ™s busy lifestyles, dining out nowadays is not only a pleasure, but a time-saving survival tool. Restaurants may eventually be required to provide nutritional facts for their meals, but even without hard numbers, awareness of the pitfalls can go a long way toward helping us control those calorie counts.
We just need to think about what weâ ™re up against when someone else is serving, so that when weâ ™re eating out, weâ ™re not taking so much in.
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Dining Out, Weighing In: Restaurant Meals are Higher in Calories