What's in What You Eat?It is said you are what you eat, from your head to your feet. So why not know… What's in what you eat?

Restaurants all over the country and the millions of people who dine at them often share a strong misconception about a particular class of food.

My diet mainly consists of meat, fruit, vegetables, seeds, and nuts, so it would be safe to assume that any menu that says served with “seasonal or fresh vegetables” would be good to go for myself and everyone else trying to up their vegetable intake. So what causes my extreme sadness when I get my entree? What do I see when I look for my vegetables? I see this:

Corn

Corn is not a vegetable. Corn on the cob is still not a vegetable. Regardless of how you prepare corn, it is not a vegetable. Corn is a grain. Corn grows like a grain, is used like a grain (corn flour) and has the same high glycemic starchy inflammatory properties as all other grains do. Please, stop serving us corn as a vegetable.

Beans

So many forms of beans are served as the “vegetable” side everywhere. Whether it be green beans, snap peas, pea pods, loose peas, or anything else with the word “pea” or “bean” in it, it is not a vegetable. It is a legume and contains all the negative health attributes that legumes have.

Soy

It is much less common to get a side of soybeans as the vegetable, but it is still possible. Also, a lot of times meats will say they are fed a “vegetable diet” consisting of soybeans as a main staple (along with corn of course). Soy”beans” are not vegetables, and as they sound, they are legumes.

Potatoes

Ok yes technically potatoes are vegetables but honestly who thinks of them as such? If you order a side of vegetables are you really wanting potatoes? Most people wouldn’t think getting mashed potatoes or french fries counts as eating vegetables. I know when I order, I definitely don’t want potatoes as my vegetable. Do you?

Hopefully this cleared up some confusions about what is a vegetable and what isn’t. I can only hope that someday I don’t have to question the restaurant staff of what vegetables come with it to see if they actually are vegetables as stated.

Have any of you had this happen to you as many times as I have?

Let me know.

I never posted about this before but a few weeks ago, King County completed stage 1 of the trans fat ban.

Right now, oil used in fryers must contain no more than 0.5grams of trans fat per serving.

We must wait until next April before the 0.5gram restriction is broadened to all items, not just oil.

While restaurants may claim they are trans fat free by being under the 0.5 limit, on this blog, the restaurants that we say are trans fat free, are actually completely free.

I sent another email to AMC Theaters making sure that there wasn’t anything else bad in the popcorn (high fructose corn syrup, MSG), and I got this reply

Gil,

The nutritional information for most of our items can be found at their respective manufacturers’ websites. Our hot dogs are Oscar Mayer, our tortilla chips are Tostitos, our cheese is FunNacho, and all of our candy is name-brand.

Our popcorn is Orville Redenbacher brand popcorn seed. It is popped in a mixture of 100% coconut oil and butteral (a salt & butter blend which contains milk and soy). There are no additional ingredients in our popcorn besides what I have mentioned here.

Please let me know if I can be of any more assistance!

While milk and soy are debated non-paleo ingredients, for a fun time at the movies, this seems like very good news.

I sent AMC Theaters an email asking about transfats in the popcorn. This was the reply I got (and less than 24 hours after sending)

Dear Gil,

Thank you for contacting AMC Theatres. I have attached a copy of the nutritional information for our small, medium, and large sized popcorns. Our popcorn is prepared with coconut oil, which is not hydrogenated and contains no trans fats. Additionally, I wanted to let you know that we do not offer any products at our concession stand which contain trans fat.

If you have any more questions, please feel free to contact me directly at (800) xxx-xxxx.

Sincerely,

Nick LaBruzzo
Coordinator, Operations Excellence
AMC Theatres
Ph: (800) xxx-xxxx
Fax: (816) xxx-xxxx

I am still going to try to find an ingredients list and will post it once I have it.

The attached nutritional guide showed that there are still pretty high levels of sodium and saturated fats, but at least transfats are at a zero.