Cinema popcorn is nutritional horror show: US study

Forget Freddy Krueger or flesh-eating zombies: the real villain of a night at the movies could be lurking in a bag of popcorn or drinks carton, according to a new US study.

Nutritional analysis of popcorn servings at some of America's biggest cinema chains has found mind-boggling calorie counts that may surprise consumers who think of the snack as a relatively healthy treat.

However the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest compared some popcorn and drinks combos to consuming three McDonald's quarter-pounders topped with 12 pats of butter.

The CSPI said in a statement that a medium popcorn and soda combo at Regal, the United States' biggest movie theater chain, contained an eye-popping 1,610 calories and around 60 grams of saturated fat.

I had no illusions that theater popcorn with the extra butter was anything other than circulatory system clogging death. But even with this information I doubt if I'll stop eating it. Especially when my multiplex gives free popcorn on various days of the week.

Now I not only want the popcorn, but 3 quarter pounders with cheese......

and butter.

Somtimes I really don't understand myself at all...

what else are they going to ruin for us?

Stick to the nachos, at least then you dupe yourself into pretending there's actual nutritional value in the pseudo-dairy cheese product.

Originally posted by maria_stardust
Stick to the nachos, at least then you dupe yourself into pretending there's actual nutritional value in the pseudo-dairy cheese product.

Thanks for the input m_s! You have inspired me to make a pledge!

Herewith I will clog up my arteries with pseudo-dairy cheese and not that awful pseudo-dairy butter. All washed down with a diet drink, containing pseudo-sugar sweetening products like aspertame or splenda or stevia.

It's a sad day when the way to eat healthy in the theater is a corndog.

Popcorn at the movies is a nutritional horror that I have to munch on . If they served Nachos at the movies here in New Zealand I could well be making a pig of myself by eating both Popcorn and Nachos while watching whatever on the big screen .