Eat Out Eat Well

Entertaining, Buffets, Parties, Events

What To Eat When Party Food Is Heavy On Wings, Pizza, And Chips

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pizza-soda

  • Stick with grilled meat, veggies, or baked chips rather than fried.
  • Turkey, baked ham, and grilled chicken are better choices than wings and fried chicken.
  • Plain bread, pitas, or wraps are less caloric than biscuits or cornbread. Or, try using lettuce as a sandwich wrap.
  • Go for salsa and skip the guacamole; mustard instead of mayo.
  • Minimize calories by dipping chicken wings into hot sauce instead of Buffalo sauce.
  • Try using celery for crunch and as a dipper instead of chips.
  • Try fruit for dessert.
  • Go for thin crust rather than thick doughy crust pizza. Choose the slices with vegetables — not pepperoni or meatballs.  If you’re not embarrassed, try blotting up the free-floating oil that sits on top of a greasy slice (soak up even a teaspoon of oil saves you 40 calories and 5 grams of fat).
  • Alcohol adds calories and lowers your inhibitions so your resolve not to eat everything at the buffet table often flies right out the window. Try alternating water or diet soda with beer or alcohol which decreases your alcohol calories by 50%. Alcohol has 7 calories per gram but doesn’t fill you up the way food does, so you can drink a lot and not feel stuffed.

Does The Thought Of A Buffet Send Your Inner Calorie Counter Into Panic Mode?

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buffet table-graphicEating well and being “calorically observant” can be a challenge at parties, buffets, and events.  Since wedding and graduation season is upon us, week 3 of the lose 5 pounds in 5 weeks challenge will focus on making good choices to save calories when choosing your food at these events – especially since so many of them are buffets where the array of food can be dazzling and too darn tempting.

The Allure And Terror Of The Buffet Table

It’s possible to keep calories under control at a buffet even with all of that tempting food staring you in the face.  Whether it’s a fancy catered affair or pizza, wings, and cold cuts laid out on the kitchen table, why give yourself extra opportunities to shovel chips and dip or passed hors d’oeuvres into your mouth all night long? You’re human, so stay out of hand-to-mouth range, too. You’re far less likely to mindlessly eat if you have to leave a conversation and walk across the room to get to the food.

We Eat With Our Eyes 

  • Keeping your back to the table is one of the easiest strategies to use.  We often eat with out eyes – if we see something delicious, we want to eat it.  So, don’t look at it.  Keep your back to the tempting food as you’re having conversations or working the room. If you have a drink in your hand – it doesn’t matter what it is – your hands are full and it’s more difficult to grab food to eat.
  • Hors d’oeuvres can really sucker punch you, too.  They’re small, but the calories really add up. Make up your mind how many you’ll eat ahead of time and stick to your plan or you’ll have shoved down a thousand calories before you know it. Pick the ones you love and avoid the ones you don’t.  Why sacrifice your calories for something you don’t love?  Try to keep a mental count because when you’re talking and drinking it’s far too easy to grab from each passing tray.
  • When it’s time to sit, choose a seat that puts your back to the buffet — preferably one that’s some distance away from it.  How long can you sit and stare at those lavishly decorated cakes or the mounds of fried food without wanting to sample?  Not having them in your line of sight helps to keep your mind – and your stomach – off of the food choices.
  • Distance helps, too.  Having to get up and walk past lots people – many of whom you know – while balancing a plate filled to the brim, can serve as a “seconds” and “thirds” deterrent.
  • Before putting any food on your plate, just cruise the buffet line to eyeball all of the choices – a potential minefield of diet busters! What do you want to do?  What’s going to energize you and not mess too badly with the calorie range that you want to maintain? Make up your mind, make your choice, and enjoy what you’ve decided to eat.

 

What Kind Of Restaurant Is This?

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You can tell a lot from a restaurant’s menu – not just what you can get to eat, but some other things, too.  It would be kind of weird to have spaghetti and meatballs on the cover of a pancake house restaurant – and it would be kind of gross to have grease stains and tomato sauce on a rumpled sheet of paper that lists the restaurant’s specials.

A Menu Is A Defacto Business Card

A menu acts as the restaurant’s business card and can quickly give you some ideas about its inner workings. A dirty menu might imply a dirty kitchen; a clean and neat menu creates a different impression. Even though the main purpose is to tell you what’s to eat, a secondary objective is to make you forget about money so you make your food and drink selections without thinking about the price.

The way the menu looks should be in sync with the restaurant’s concept and image — the décor, service, food quality, and price range — and give you an idea about what kind of eating experience is in store. A six or eight page plastic coated menu, the kind usually found in diners, doesn’t convey the same dining experience as the two page leather bound menu found in an upscale restaurant.

Tip:

A menu’s design should be in sync with the restaurant’s concept and image — the décor, service, food quality, and price range — and give you an idea about the overall dining experience you can expect.

Disorganized menus might mean a kitchen without a plan. A menu with a huge number of offerings (unless it’s a place like a diner with a big turnover) makes you wonder how fresh the food is – and how it’s being repackaged into different kinds of offerings.  A dirty menu is like a dirty bathroom and should make you  think about the cleanliness of the kitchen and the people working in it!

What are your thoughts?

Do you eat out?  This is the third article in a series of consecutive posts about decoding restaurant menus. Keep checking back for more information that might help you with your restaurant choices.

What Will You Eat On Super Bowl Sunday?

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It’s amazing how food has become associated with football — from tailgating to Super Bowl parties.  If you want to, there are plenty of choices for eating deliciously well if you are more mindful than mindless about your choices.

Your best bets are to stick with grilled meat, veggies, baked chips rather than fried, plain bread, a pita, or wrap rather than biscuits or cornbread. Go for salsa and skip the guacamole.  Turkey, baked ham, and grilled chicken are better choices than wings and fried chicken.

What Makes Us Eat Too Much?

Hunger doesn’t always prompt most of us to overeat – especially on holidays or event days. Family, friends, plate size, packaging, lighting, smells, distractions, the environment, and feelings all do. We make about 200+ food related decisions a day.– like deciding between pizza or wings; a sandwich or salad; chocolate chip or oatmeal cookie; light beer or diet coke; kitchen table or chair in front of the TV.  That’s about 200+ daily opportunities to be mindful or mindless – and probably a whole lot more when faced with a flow of food, an exciting game, a halftime show, and some good natured (hopefully) wagering.

Here Are Some Good, Better, and Best Options:

  • Tostada with guacamole:  2 pieces (9.3 oz), 360 calories, 23g fat, 32g carbs, 12g protein
  • Salsa:  1 tablespoon 4 calories, .04g fat, 1g carbs, .2g protein
  • Nacho flavored tortilla chips, reduced fat:  1 oz, 126 calories, 4g fat, 20g carbs, 2g protein
  • Nacho flavored tortilla chips:  1oz, 141 calories, 7g fat, 18g carbs, 1g protein
  • Potato chips:  1oz, 152 calories, 10g fat, 15g carbs, 2g protein
  • Potato chips, reduced fat:  1 oz, 134 calories, 6g fat, 19g carbs, 2g protein
  • Raw baby carrots:  1 medium, 4 calories, 0 fat, .8g carbs, 0 protein
  • Pizza Hut cheese pizza:  1 slice (1/8 of a 12” medium pan pizza), 240 calories, 10g fat, 27g carbs, 11g protein
  • Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza:  1 slice (1/8 of a 12” medium pan pizza), 250 calories, 12g fat, 26g carbs, 11g protein
  • Grilled chicken breast:  one 4.2 oz breast, 180 calories, 4g fate, 0 carbs, 35g protein
  • KFC Fiery hot Buffalo wing:  one 1oz wing, 80 calories, 5g fat, g carbs, 4g protein
  • KFC extra crispy drumstick:  one 2oz piece, 150 calories, 6g carbs, 11g protein
  • Chili (Wendy’s, with saltine crackers):  8 oz, 187 calories, 6g fat, 19g carbs, 14g protein
  • Wheat bread:  1 slice, .9 oz., 65 calories, 1g fat,, 12g carbs, 2g protein
  • Italian combo on ciabatta (Panera):  1 sandwich, 1lb. 7 oz, 1050 calories, 47g fat, 94g carbs, 61g protein
  • Subway 6g of fat or less turkey breast & ham on wheat sandwich:  8.3oz, 296 calories, 4g fat, 48g carbs, 19g protein
  • Chocolate chip cookie:  2-1/4” from refrigerated dough. 59 calories, 3g fat, 8g carbs, 0.6g protein
  • Chocolate ice cream, Cold Stone Creamery:   5oz (like it), 326 calories, 20g fat, 33g carbs, 5g protein
  • Apple:  medium, 95 calories, .4g fat, 25g carbs, .5g protein

Just In Case:  Some Football-themed Exercises To Help Burn Off Those Calories

Try these to burn off those 1200 game day calories (Source:  DietDetective):

  • Drinking six bottles of Budweiser beer means needing to do “The Wave” 4, 280 times
  • One KFC extra crispy drumstick and an extra crispy chicken breast requires 203 end zone touchdown dances
  • Applebee’s chili cheese nachos means 159 minutes of playing non-stop professional football
  • Eating ten Lay’s classic potato chips with Kraft French onion dip means you have to dance to Madonna for 134 minutes

Are You Ready For Some Super Bowl Food Facts – And Some Calorie Saving Tips?

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Will you be joining the ranks of over 20 million Americans who will attend a Super Bowl party?  Do you side with half of all Americans who say they would rather go to a Super Bowl party than to a New Year’s Eve party?

Some Amazing Super Bowl Food Facts:

  • About one in twenty (9 million) Americans watch the game at a restaurant or a bar.
  • Americans double their average daily consumption of snacks on Super Bowl Sunday, downing more than 33 million pounds in one day.
  • The average Super Bowl watcher consumes 1,200 calories. (Source: Calorie Control Council). Potato chips are the favorite and account for 27 billion calories and 1.8 billion fat grams — the same as 4 million pounds of fat or equal to the weight of 13,000 NFL offensive linemen at 300 pounds each. (Source: ScottsdaleWeightLoss.com).
  • Nearly one in eight (13%) Americans order takeout/delivery food for the Super Bowl. The most popular choices are pizza (58%), chicken wings (50%), and subs/sandwiches (20%). (Source:  American Journal).  Almost 70% of Super Bowl watchers eat a slice (or two or three) during the game.
  • The amount of chicken wings eaten clocks in at 90 million pounds or 450 million individual wings. It would take 19 chicken breasts to get the same amount of fat that you usually get from a dozen Buffalo wings.
  • On Super Bowl Sunday Americans eat an estimated 14,500 tons of potato chips, 4000 tons of tortilla chips, and eight million pounds of avocados. Five ounces of nacho cheese Doritos equals around 700 calories. You’d have to run the length of 123 football fields to burn them off.  You’d have to eat 175 baby carrots or 700 celery sticks to get the same number of calories.
  • Stew Leonard’s, a local chain of southwestern Connecticut grocery stores, sold more than 40,000 pounds of chicken wings and 10,000 pounds of barbecued ribs and 60,000 pigs-in-blankets ahead of Super Bowl Sunday in 2012.  This year they are slso offering some healthy alternatives along with the traditional game day food.  Choices include: grilled or roasted Mediterranean vegetables, hummus instead of high-fat and high-calorie sour cream onion dip, pita instead of potato chips, and provolone salad on crostini made from aged provolone diced with roasted peppers, carrots, red onions, parsley, basil, olive oil, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, white vinegar and a touch of brown sugar on pieces of fresh, crusty bread.
  • And, according to 7-eleven, sales of antacids increase by 20% on the day after Super Bowl.

Super Bowl Party Calorie Saving Tips

  • Stick with grilled meat, veggies, or baked chips rather than fried.
  • Turkey, baked ham, and grilled chicken are better choices than wings and fried chicken.
  • Plain bread, pitas, or wraps are less caloric than biscuits or cornbread.
  • Go for salsa and skip the guacamole.
  • Minimize calories by dipping chicken wings into hot sauce instead of Buffalo sauce.
  • Try using celery for crunch and as a dipper instead of chips.
  • Try fruit for dessert.
  • Go for thin crust rather than thick doughy crust pizza. Choose the slices with vegetables, not pepperoni or meatballs.  If you’re not embarrassed, try blotting up the free-floating oil that sits on top of a greasy slice (soak up even a teaspoon of oil saves you 40 calories and 5 grams of fat).
  • Alcohol adds calories and dulls your mindful eating. Try alternating water or diet soda with beer or alcohol.  That can decrease your alcohol calories (alcohol has 7 calories/gram) by 50%.

The next post will give some examples of Good, Better, And Best Super Bowl Food Choices.