The Nutrition GuideBy Katharine Branham Just about every credible restaurant offers a nutrition guide. These are often found online or left out on a counter for your convenience. What is most surprising is that many people believe its food contents cannot be that bad for you if they are willing to print it. That is not true. What is in fact true is the majority of the population just does not look.
There is a nearby fast food restaurant in which I decided to watch closely the habits and intake of its customers. Its customers look upon this restaurant to be one of the healthiest in the area. They do not serve beef and their motto is just chicken. Every way you could possibly imagine chicken to be cooked. The deserts are a soft serve type ice cream with the recent addition of a cookies & cream milkshake that hovers somewhere around 790 calories.
I spoke to an employee at the chicken place and she mentioned that some people even come in for breakfast and get a milkshake. With just the calories from the shake alone, these customers could be taking in half of what the calorie intake should be for their age per day. This is where the nutrition guide would be handy. I am wondering if customers would be so eager to come and suck down a shake knowing the information on the guide. Recently the management for the chain sent many free shake coupons out to the schools where children would soon be in to redeem for their sip of the popular shake. Let us look at what that child may ingest on their visit using the nutritional guide provide by the establishment to help us.
4 piece chicken nugget =130
Small fries = 270
Kid size lemonade =170
Small cone ice cream = 135
This alone brings us to a total of 705 calories. Let’s say this child used their free milkshake coupon and had that instead of that small ice cream cone. That boosts the total caloric intake up to 1,360. That is the most surprising and possibly the best information these parents need to know. Open the nutritional guide, and look at what you are putting in your body. When information is available and you do utilize it, you have only yourself to blame for your weight & health.
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