It is a moment of indecision familiar to many diners: the garlic bread (486kcal) or the lower-calorie tomato bruschetta (417kcal)?
For dessert, the salted caramel cheesecake that you actually want (537kcal) or the tiramisu (422kcal)?
There are no adults who do that. At home, perhaps, keeping a little eye on calories in. But out?
The actual finding from fast food joints at lesat is that the modal response to calories counts is to order the more calories for the same price. Better deal, see?
Park slightly further away and you’ll burn off 75 calories. My Fitbit reckons that walking to the bus stop this morning was about another 80 above being sat down. And that bus stop is not at all far. 5 minutes walk I think. Probably quicker than sitting waiting for a space right next to the restaurant.
If one is watching calories one doesn’t have a dessert at all: a fruit (but not strawberries or black currants).
Someone seriously trying to lose/control weight shouldn’t go to a restaurant, instead eat at home where he/she can choose a balanced lower-calorie diet.
Written by a journlist detached from reality.
You’re right john77. If you cook for yourself, you’ll find it easier to produce the same stuff all the time. That makes it easier to keep track.
But if you’re going out to eat something, you naturally think you might as well get something pleasant for your cash.
a journlist detached from reality.
There’s one who isn’t?
asiaseen beat me to it!
When you’re out dining, for several times the money you’d spend at home, just about the last thing you do is check calorie count.
You order what you would like to eat.
At least… Normal people do.
The ..Journalist.. who wrote this piece most certainly isn’t. Many things, including “really, really special“, though.
My own rule: never say no to cheesecake. Come to that, I rarely say no to garlic bread.
But nowadays we hardly ever eat out: too often the noise is intolerable. Christ, even the coffee area in Waitrose yesterday was full of youngish people creating a din. May their avocados all be poisoned!
“My Fitbit reckons that walking to the bus stop this morning was about another 80 above being sat down. And that bus stop is not at all far. 5 minutes walk I think.”
5 minute walk, 3mph, 80 calories => ~250kg weight
75kg, 5 minute walk, 3mph => ~23 calories
the modal response to calories counts is to order the more calories for the same price. Better deal, see?
Yep. That’d be me. But if I didn’t need to eat I wouldn’t be in the restaurant.
Is that so really hard to do?
When the ice cream van came round this afternoon, I wasn’t sure whether the chocolate sundae or the toffee sundae had fewer calories. So I had both.
In my first few weeks at university, and spending my own money for the first time, I made a notebook of calories/pence and targetted buying the most calories for the lowest expenditure. Surely everybody does this. Why spend 250p on 500kCal of (product) when I could spend 125p on 500kCal on same (product)?
1.5 kg of strong white bread flour at Aldi – £1.15
Contains just under 5500 kCal. About 21p per 1000kCal.
No other product comes within a factor of 2 of that for pence per 1000kCal – I’m not counting other variants of wheat such as plain flour, bread etc. Wheat shouldn’t really be regarded as a staple along with maize, corn, rice, quinoa, spuds and the rest, as it’s just in a different league entirely.
Beats the rest on pence per 100g protein also.
Maize flour comes in at 5300 kCal/1.5kilo. So hardly anything in it, energy wise. Price? More expensive in Europe because we don’t use much of it. Cheaper where they do.
In parts of Mexico, where the taco (or whatever, umm, tortilla? but you know what I mean) is the main carb intake in the cuisine. Think how many damn tacos a farmer has to eat each day.
If you’ve ever eaten fresh tortillas de mais, straight off the griddle, you’ll know that there’s no limit to the number can be eaten. It’s like buying fresh baguettes from the boulangerie. You buy one for home & one to eat whilst walking home. And you still might arrive without any bread.
Mexico they sell tortillas made from specific cultivars of maize flour. That’s like talking fine wines in Bordeaux.
Also depends on where you’re at.
Its fairly easy for me to make garlic bread at home. Bruschetta is more involved. I’d be eating the bruschetta because I’m less likely to have eaten it recently. Same with tiramisu over the cheesecake. You can get the latter in the grocery store.
In neither case, of course, are calories figuring into the decision – If I’m needing to count calories then I’m not going to eat in a *restaurant* because its all going to be high calorie foods and large portions there.
“Tim Worstall
July 16, 2023 at 11:01 pm
In parts of Mexico, where the taco (or whatever, umm, tortilla? but you know what I mean) is the main carb intake in the cuisine. Think how many damn tacos a farmer has to eat each day.”
Tacos are lunch. But they have corn, rice, beans, with each meal. Lot’s of carbs, lots of cheap energy.