Healthy Movie Popcorn?

BIG
Ready to sit back and enjoy the movie? Not yet. First, the theater is hoping you’ll stop by the concession stand for a snack. You know, something light…like, say, a bucket of popcorn with the calories of a Hamburger plus a Quarter Pounder plus a Big Mac at McDonald’s. Surely, no one expects you to sit through a two-hour movie
with nothing to eat or drink. After all, you’re burning dozens of calories in there, what with all that leg crossing, shifting around in your seat...and reaching for some popcorn. With all that activity, you can really work up an appetite,
especially if you’re still growing. And, sad to say, many
adults are.
Continued on p. 2.

2 N U T R I T I O N A C T I O N H E A LT H L E T T E R ■ D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9
POPCORN

C O V E R S T O R Y
A “medium” (20 cups) or a “large” (also 20 cups) has 60 grams of sat fat. Of course, a large means a free refill (Yay!), so there’s no limit to the damage you can do.
Suggestion: Move your cardiologist’s phone number to your speed dial before
the lights go down. Just kidding. It takes years to clog those arteries…and years for your blood pressure to respond to the salt shock (550 milligrams of sodium—a third of a day’s worth—for a small and 980 mg for a medium or large). The calories, on the other hand, may show up much sooner...and where you least want them.

Budget 670 for a small and 1,200 for a medium or large. You could think of each
small as a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pepperoni Pizza and each medium or large
as two. But the two pizzas pack “only” a day’s worth of sat fat—nowhere near the
three days’ worth in a medium or large popcorn. How can a medium and large at Regal
each hold the same 20 cups of popcorn? Simple. The taller medium comes in a bag with straight sides, while the squatter large comes in a tapered tub that’s wider at the top (see photo). The tub sure looks like it holds more. Other than for the free refill (shudder), why else would moviegoers pay $8 for a large (a medium is $7)?

What’s the healthiest snack to buy at the movies? You can go for 400 to 1,200
calories’ worth of popcorn that (at many theaters) is essentially fried in one to
three days’ worth of saturated fat. Or you can buy a package of candy with 300
to 1,100 empty calories (plus at least half a day’s sat fat if it’s chocolate). Soft
drinks dispatch another 150 to 500 calories to your thirsty fat cells. The best snack at the movies? No snack at all.

Information compiled by Amy Ramsay, with help from Melissa Pryputniewicz.
“ Did you know that popcorn is among the healthiest—and tastiest—snacks around?” asks the Web site of the Popcorn Board, an industry group. “It’s a whole
grain food that’s low in calories and fat and it’s a complex carbohydrate.”
Maybe that’s one reason people fork over $4 to $8 for a bag or tub of popcorn
when they enter a movie theater. It sounds like they’re munching on a stalk
of broccoli, for goodness sakes.

Turns out the Popcorn Board is right...if you’re talking low-fat popcorn or (fat-free) air-popped. Eating a tub of movie theater popcorn is more like eating an 8 oz. bag of potato chips, and that’s assuming your theater pops in the best oil available and you get it without the “buttery” topping.

Nutrition Action Healthletter (ISSN 0885-7792) is published 10 times a year (monthly except bi-monthly in Jan./Feb. and Jul./Aug.).
POSTMASTER: Send changes to Nutrition Action Healthletter, 1875 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009-5728.
Application to mail at Periodical postage rates approved at post office of Washington, DC, and at additional offices.
© 2009 by Center for Science in the Public Interest. One-year subscription (10 issues): $24. Two years: $42. - Vol. 36 No. 10

Movie Theaters Fill Buckets …and BELLIES
Here’s what we found when we sent samples of popcorn and toppings from the three largest theater chains to an independent lab for analysis. (Each gave us nutrition facts for its popcorn. But just to be sure, we analyzed samples from three different theaters for each chain. For two of the chains—Regal and AMC—we went to theaters in the Washington, D.C., area. For Cinemark, our samples came from Texas, Illinois, and
Maryland.)

WITH 548 theaters in 39 states plus the District of Columbia, Regal is the largest chain in the United States. It pops in coconut oil, which is 90 percent saturated. (In contrast, lard is 40 percent saturated.) Translation: A “small” popcorn
(that’s about 11 cups’ worth) with no buttery topping has 34 grams of saturated fat. So even if you split it with a friend (unlikely), you each get nearly a day’s worth of artery paste. And it gets worse from there.

At Regal, a medium (left) and a large popcorn each has 1,200 calories and three days’ worth of saturated fat. POPCORN
BIG
Photos: © Valery Potapova/fotolia.com (top), Stephen Schmidt (bottom).
N U T R I T I O N A C T I O N H E A LT H L E T T E R ■ D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9 3
C O V E R S T O R Y REGAL
(popped in coconut oil)
AMC
(popped in coconut oil)
CINEMARK
(popped in non-hydrogenated canola oil)
11 cups
20 cups
20 cups
2 Tbs. “buttery” topping adds
260 calories 5 g sat fat 0 g trans fat
1 Tbs. butter topping adds
130 calories 9 g sat fat 0.4 g trans fat
2 Tbs. butter topping adds
260 calories 18 g sat fat 0.7 g trans fat
9 cups
16 cups
370 calories
420 calories
LARGE MEDIUM Small
210 mg
sodium
690 mg
sodium
550 mg
sodium
670 calories
60 g sat fat
1,200 calories
1,200 calories
980 mg
sodium
980 mg
sodium
1,030 calories
57 g sat fat
580 mg
sodium
760 calories
910 calories
1,240 mg
sodium
1,500 mg
sodium
Another oopsy-daisy: According to Regal, a medium has 720 calories, while a large has 960 calories. Both are lower than our lab results. Oh well. What’s an extra 200 to 500 calories when your snack hovers around the 1,000-calorie mark? They don’t call them tubs for nothing.

Toppings: For customers who think plain popcorn isn’t soaked in enough oil, Regal offers a “buttery” topping. According to Regal and the topping manufacturer, it adds 130 calories to a small, 200 calories to a medium, and 260 calories to a large.
We analyzed the topping to make sure that it had no trans fat. But we didn’t check to see how much topping the concession staff at Regal—or any other chain—adds. Odds are, it varies. And odds are, it’s more than what Regal claims.
> > > > >
590 calories
330 mg
sodium
Notes: Cup estimates based on 11 grams of popcorn per cup. Topping serving sizes for all chains based on Regal numbers. Daily limits for 2,000 cals: Sat Fat: 20 g, Sodium: 1,500 mg.
34 g sat fat
20 g sat fat
2 g sat fat
33 g sat fat
3 g sat fat
60 g sat fat
4 g sat fat
1 Tbs. “buttery” topping adds
130 calories 2 g sat fat 0 g trans fat
1½ Tbs. “buttery” topping adds
200 calories 3 g sat fat 0 g trans fat
1 Tbs. “buttery” topping adds
120 calories 2 g sat fat 0 g trans fat
1½ Tbs. “buttery” topping adds
180 calories 3 g sat fat 0 g trans fat
2 Tbs. “buttery” topping adds
240 calories 4 g sat fat 0 g trans fat
1 Tbs. “buttery” topping adds
130 calories 2 g sat fat 0 g trans fat
8 cups
17 cups
14 cups
6 cups
1½ Tbs. “buttery” topping adds
200 calories 3 g sat fat 0 g trans fat
2 Tbs. “buttery” topping adds
260 calories 4 g sat fat 0 g trans fat
1½ Tbs. butter topping adds
200 calories 14 g sat fat 0.6 g trans fat

4 N U T R I T I O N A C T I O N H E A LT H L E T T E R ■ D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9

AMC, the nation’s second-largest chain (with 307 theaters in 30 states and the District of Columbia), also pops in coconut oil. The only good news: AMC’s popcorns aren’t as super-sized as Regal’s. But they’re bigger than the company acknowledges.
According to AMC, a small popcorn contains 225 calories. In fact, the small AMC popcorns that we bought weighed about 50 percent more than the company claimed.
Our AMC smalls contained 370 calories and 20 grams of saturated fat—about what you’d get from that classic healthy snack: eight pats of butter. Based on what we were served, AMC lowballs its other sizes as well. For example, the company’s 430-calorie
medium morphed into 590 calories and 33 grams of saturated fat. And the 660-calorie large became a 1,030-calorie behemoth with 57 grams of sat fat. It’s like eating a pound of baby back ribs topped with a scoop of Häagen-Dazs ice cream (except for the extra day’s worth of sat fat in the popcorn).

What’s next: fun-house mirrors that make you look skinny on your way out of the theater? Toppings: Fake-butter fans must love AMC. The chain lets patrons pump
their own “buttery” topping. No skimpy tablespoon of extra fat on a small or two
tablespoons on a large, like Regal claims to use. With 120 calories per tablespoon,
you should be able to squeeze another 200 to 500 calories into the bucket of fat
cells in your lap.

Cinemark, with 296 theaters in 39 states, deserves some applause. The nation’s third largest chain pops in non-hydrogenated canola oil instead of coconut. Assuming you add no “buttery” topping,your heart can escape a Cinemark popcorn relatively unscathed. Your belly (and blood pressure) won’t be so lucky. If you share an unbuttered (8-cup) small with a fellow moviegoer, each of you will walk away with about 200 calories (seasoned with 340 milligrams of sodium). That’s the best you can expect from movie theater popcorn, unless you ask the theater to pop you a batch without salt. (All the Cinemark, AMC, and Regal locations we called said they would do that.) A medium popcorn (14 cups) at Cinemark reaches 760 calories and a large
(17 cups) hits 910 calories (and 1,500 mg of sodium—an entire day’s quota). Since
when is half-a-day’s-calories’ worth of corn, oil, and salt called a “snack”?
Maybe since America started competing in the Sumo Belly-Lifting Olympics.
Small at Cinemark

Small at
AMC
Small at Regal ,
Medium at AMC
Medium at CINEMARK
Medium at Regal ,
Large at AMC
Large at CINEMARK
Large at Regal
16 fl. oz.
150 calories
10 tsp.
sugar
Notes: Ice takes up about a quarter of the cup. There are 4 grams of sugar in every teaspoon.
54 fl. oz.
500 calories
33 tsp.
sugar soda
21 fl. oz.
200 calories
13 tsp.
sugar
32 fl. oz.
300 calories
19 tsp.
sugar
44 fl. oz.
400 calories
26 tsp.
sugar
combos
Calories Sat Fat (g)
REGAL
1 medium popcorn, 1 medium soda 1,610 60
1 large popcorn, 2 medium sodas 2,020 60
AMC
1 large popcorn, 1 large soda 1,440 57
1 large popcorn, 2 large sodas 1,850 57
CINEMARK
1 large popcorn, 1 large soda 1,320 4
1 large popcorn, 2 large sodas 1,730 4
A combo at Regal (medium popcorn plus medium soda) has 1,610 calories. That’s like eating six scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, four bacon strips, and four
sausage links before the lights come up. Photo

Comment

I love popcorn and am eating some now, but I never knew the movie popcorn was so bad for us. I just knew that it tasted good.