Peanut butter is healthy, right? I mean, peanuts are a natural food and who didn’t grow up eating lots of Skippy or Jiff or even some of those awful (way back in the 60’s) store bought brands. I would get my peanut butter fix everywhere. Normally, it was two P & B sandwiches on super fresh Wonder Bread. And I always went for the super chunky type peanut butter—heaven on earth!! When I made my sandwiches, I layered it on thick—no modest covering of the bread for me—only the skinny kids did that.
When I needed a snack, I went for those “healthy” orange-ish peanut butter wavers that we saw everywhere—all the candy machines had them and 7-11 always had tons of them in stock. When I got just a little bit stressed out, (but still in complete control of what I put into my mouth), I would devour those incredible Nature Valley Peanut Butter bars. Two packages and I felt okay. Perfect and healthy substitutes for candy, right? Preparing for a test or having difficulty with homework, nothing did the trick more than a couple of Reeces Peanut Butter Cups. And then, when I couldn’t stand it anymore—you got it!! I reached out for the ultimate food —-Hagen Dazs Peanut Butter-Chocolate ice cream.
Growing up, no one paid any attention to what was in the food we ate. If it tasted good, then it must be okay to eat and if it tasted great, well, then, all the better. Let’s eat more! Chemicals, additives and preservatives were in everything, and so having some oil and some sugar in every serving made complete sense—these were both natural. How much sugar and oil could possibly be in each spoonful and anyway, who cared? We were all well fed and we were all let to believe that we, in the wealthiest country in the world, had the healthiest, most nutritious diet on earth.
My favorite foods:
So, even though the food labels and nutrition facts have been on packaging for many years now, I never paid much attention until recently. I have to admit that sometimes I was intrigued and curious about all of those numbers, but I really didn’t understand them. Did I really want to, and did I really have the time to pay attention to everything that I ate every day and then add up all the numbers? Who has the patience to do that?. All of the numbers were basically meaningless to me anyway, and so just like practically everyone else, I disregarded them
Recently, however, after taking the 12 day Dr. McDougall On-Line Weight Loss Program, I decided take a look at some of the nutrition labels of my favorite foods. I don’t eat ice cream anymore, so just for the heck of it and my own amusement I went on line on line to check out what I really was putting into my body all these years:
At a first glance, it doesn’t look so bad. I mean at 340 calories for a treat, that wasn’t awful, right?. But wait—3.5 servings per container??? When you’re stressed out, who does that? At a minimum, I ate at least half of the tub as my serving size. More often than not, though, it was at least two thirds of the container because I never really had to worry about sharing it with anyone else in the family (they all loved Hagen Dasz, but didn’t like this flavor). So, what that meant is that every time I reached for this “treat” I was downing a whopping 785 calories! (340 calories per serving times 3.5 servings per container is 1,190 calories per container. Two thirds of that is 785). To make matters worse, a full 61% of the calories come from fat (210 fat calories per serving divided by 340 calories per serving). And it even got scarier: There are 11 grams of saturated fat (the worst kind) per serving. That meant I was ingesting 25.41 grams of saturated fat for my serving size and grams of fat and 150 mg of cholesterol!!! (I won’t bore you with the calculations, but take my word for it, these numbers are not good!
I knew that these numbers looked and seemed way too high (and I knew I was truly overweight from all of my stress related eating) but how bad was it? It was clear that this treat had WAY too much fat, cholesterol and calories. A quick google search revealed the following:
On calories per day: the recommend average is about 2,500 for me. So, what this meant is that a full 31% of my daily calorie requirement came from a 5-10 minute stress distraction!! What about all the meals and all of the other snacks I was eating per day?
It gets worse: The American Heart Association recommends a maximum of about 13 grams of saturated fat per day. I was already at 25.41 just with the ice cream!
Then, to top it off, for cholesterol, 200 to 300 milligrams of it per day is suggested as a maximum (source: WebMD and also National Institute of Health (.gov). I was at 150 milligrams already with just this one food source.
Thankfully, my old eating habits are a thing of the past. I still get stressed, of course, but fortunately, I no longer reach for Hagen Dazs nor any of those other incredibly unhealthy foods. Sure, I’ll still occasionally reach out for some peanut butter, but it’s always the brand that is just 100% peanuts (maybe a little bit of salt, too).
