The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

You have to be very careful when you're deciding what to eat. A lot of the time, when you think you're eating something "better" and choose one product over another, you might be surprised to discover you ultimately made the wrong choice. For example, I used to enjoy a chocolate chip muffin in the morning at work almost every day. I chose this over a doughnut because, for some reason, I just assumed a muffin would have less sugar and calories than a sugary doughnut. Well, when I took the time to research the actual calorie content, it was surprising to discover that my "better" chocolate chip muffin had 430 calories and 16 grams of fat. A chocolate dip doughnut had about 1/2 of those numbers (I should point out now I actually don't have either).

It's been cold lately, so why not enjoy a nice Tim Horton's hot chocolate? I haven't had one in ages. And while taking a sip, I decided to visit their website to check in on the calorie content. Turns out it wasn't the calorie count that was surprising, but I was shocked to find out this one cup of hot chocolate had two grams of trans fat in it! This may not seem like much, but there's legislation getting pushed to ban trans fat in everything as these small amounts of trans fat in your food can quickly add up. Trans fat is an artificial cooking lard/oil that helps with shelf life and taste, but provides no nutritional value whatsoever. It also increases the risk of coronary disease amongst other health problems. So no longer will I order a Tim's hot chocolate and I'll be sure to check to see if the trans fat content is the same for other places.

This also shows how important providing nutritional information is. Every time I go grocery shopping, I always check the label for calorie, fat and trans fat content and make better decisions. If it has trans fat in it, I put it back on the shelf automatically. I think it's definitely helped with my recent weight loss.