I used to make a dietitian joke about movie going: “You don’t gain weight from food eaten during the movie, because it is part of the total entertainment experience”.

Unfortunately, my body did not cooperate – it counted every single calorie that I mindlessly nibbled. The joke is getting worse and worse, because the containers of popcorn, soda and candy are …… well …… growing as fast as the average American waistline. Yes, I know that there are other choices at the concession stand now days; but hot dogs, nachos and pizza are not much better than the candy and popcorn.

It’s possible that you may be feeling a bit confused by this info, because I’ve told you in the past what a great whole grain snack popcorn is. I wasn’t, however, really talking about a whole bucket worth of 1,200 calories (before you add the 250 calories of buttery topping) and a huge load of saturated fat. I was talking about home popped popcorn; even if you put a little butter on a batch, it’s hard to get the calories and sat fat as high as the theaters do. Also, it’s much easier to go though a huge bucket when your eyes and emotions are glued to the screen, while your hands and mouth are on autopilot.

If you want popcorn at home and don’t want to fuss with an air popper or other popping method, you could use the Orville Redenbacher’s 94% Fat Free microwave version. You can make seven and a half cups of popcorn for 240 calories, but the sodium (480 mg) is still high, especially if you’re trying to keep your sodium under a daily goal of 2200 mg. There’s only one gram of sat fat in the entire package; that part’s not too bad.

Nutrition Action Healthletter did a terrific job of writing about theatre popcorn and other so-called “snacks” in their December issue. They compared lab reports on multiple samples of three theater chain’s popcorn; Regal, AMC and Cinemark. In some cases, the lab results showed more calories and fats than the theatres claim, but even what they list is outrageous. I encourage you to click on the link and read their report, but just in case you don’t, be sure to skip the popcorn at Regal or AMC if you don’t want to eat 3 days worth of saturated fat in one sitting. Yikes!!!  Regal Theaters are using coconut oil in their popcorn (90 percent saturated fat – compared with lard which is a mere 40 percent saturated). Holy Moly! Yikes again!

The Nutrition Action Healthletter suggests that you have your cardiologist’s phone number on your speed dial before the lights go down. Their sarcastic humor reaches a peak when discussing refills, and I would elaborate just a bit:  Refills are great for efficient fat depositing, since it takes the lid off the total calories you can consume.  However, since getting a refill requires walking dozens of steps, this exercise detracts from the sedentary calorie-guzzling experience.  More fat could be deposited in the same time interval if employees would just start bringing the refills to the seats, and the super-sized bucket would be replaced with a large garbage bag. The garbage bag, incidentally, would facilitate clean up, but the downside for the theatre budget is that before long the seats would have to be replaced with wider ones. No problem, when the seats are exchanged, you could introduce a button to summon the refill attendant, and make the cost up through a greater volume of snack sales.

If the calories and saturated fat of theater popcorn are not enough to motivate you, notice the sodium.  It ranges for a small popcorn at AMC at 210 mg sodium to the large at Cinemark 1,500 mg. If you don’t already have high blood pressure and the other health problems related to excessive sodium, you could turn that around fairly easily by avoiding these highly overpriced temptations.

In my experience, the best eating at the theater is to go right after dinner or lunch – then I’m relatively safe. I can easily sit and enjoy the movie without eating. If I go before dinner and am hungry, it can be trouble for my goals of weight management. I haven’t stopped by the concession stand recently; are they offering anything healthy? I’m sure they will avoid celery sticks and mini-carrots – can’t have noisy crunching going on during soft dialogue scenes!

Home snack: If you decide that you want a nice whole grain popcorn snack without coconut oil and a huge load of salt, you could pop it yourself. You can pop it in canola oil and end up with a healthy snack, if you keep the saltshaker under control. Even if you pop 8 tablespoons of popcorn (yields about 13 cups popped corn) in 2 teaspoons of real butter (see picture below) it only has 4.7 grams of saturated fat; you’re ahead of the Regal or AMC theater popcorn by a long shot. If you put a ¼ teaspoon of salt on the whole batch, about 575 mg of sodium will be in the batch; obviously some sticks to the bowl and falls to the bottom – so that’s good. If you want to have the whole grain without the sodium and fat, you can make it with an air popper.

With real butter - shared with your popcorn buddy, 2.3 grams of sat fat each

Enough for a long movie (about 13 cups).

Popcorn with the American Heart Assoc. statement.

Compare brands, if you choose microwave popcorn - some are loaded with fat and sodium.