The Fitness Guru

……that was the first thing out of my mouth when I heard the news. Weight Watchers has put their seal of approval on three McDonald’s meals in New Zealand in preparation for an introduction to the Australian market: the Fillet-O-Fish, with 18g of fat and 380 calories; Chicken McNuggets, with 29g of fat and 485 calories; and Sweet Chilli Seared Chicken Wrap, with 18.8g of fat and 404 calories.

What part of the chicken is the nugget? Any idea how the chickens are raised, fed, and killed? How are they stored? What’s added to them? How are they cooked? 485 calories? What if you are trying to stick to a 1500 calorie meal plan to lose weight? That’s close to a third of all your calories!

And not to mention the studies that state when people go into McDonald’s, they usually end up buying less healthy items, like the fun fries to go with the Nuggets, and the tasty beverage to wash it down. And then the Weight Watchers client– who has entrusted this company with their desire to shed unhealthy pounds– is right back where they were before: headed off to the fast food restaurant to fill themselves.

“This is a noble cause,” the chief executive of McDonald’s New Zealand, Mark Hawthorne, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Noble? Hey, I can’t blame McDonald’s for trying to get out from under the cloud of being unhealthy. They deserve the cloud, but, by all means, try and scamper out from under it.

But this is the final nail in my Weight Watchers coffin. I’ve been stewing over their “techniques” for years and this one takes the Snickers cake. My problem with WW is that, by assigning points to different foods and meals, they remove a needed step: education. One of my clients used to save up all her days points so that she could have a huge dessert at the end of the day. That’s how she used her WW experience.

No doubt WW spokespeople will come forth and say “that is not the intention. We try very hard to educate the masses on eating healthy. Some people will disregard the process and move toward bad habits. Is that our fault?”

When you set out and whore your brand name so that you can get in tight with McDonald’s and the 4 million people they serve in New Zealand every week? You’re damn right it’s your fault.

Shame on you. You’re ridiculous.

(caution: the following video has lots and lots of naughty words and violence. But for some unknown reason, all my anger and fast food, it popped into my head)

It’s enough to make Gidget, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, roll over in her grave (RIP July 21, 2009). Desperate to both cash in on the Resolution Weight Loss Fervor, and fearful that the Fervor may cut into their market share for the first six weeks of the year, Taco Bell has inflicted Christine, the TB Weight Loss Heroine, on an otherwise unsuspecting public. According to the company, Christine, 27 years old, lost 54 pounds by eating at Taco Bell 5-8 times per week, selecting items off their Fresca menu which replaces certain high calorie ingredients with lower calorie ones. But fear not– it’s still the same burrito.

Taco Bell is quick to say that this is not intended as a weight loss program, though they use the word “diet” repeatedly.

My opinion: it reminds me of my friend Cathy who went on the frozen yogurt diet our sophomore year of college. SHe lost a lot of weight by only eating frozen yogurt. Weight loss? Yes. Because she is altering her caloric intake. Healthy? No.If you cut your caloric intake you will lose weight– in the short run. But the only healthy means of weight loss is creating a life style that can carry you for…..well, a lifetime. The people who repeatedly go to Taco Bell will start to move away from the Fresca menu because the other options are so readily available, though I am sure that hasn’t occurred to the marketing department at Taco Bell. They are only interested in a healthy America.

It also reminds me of the old “parrot” skit from Monty Python. Guy walks in with a dead parrot, store owner denies it’s dead. You can say the fast food is healthier but that still don’t make it healthy.

Yesterday, I got into a pretty heated debate over the calorie count of an Italian Ice. It was a funny exchange as the guesses were all over the map. The answer is simple: it depends on a) the size of the serving, and b) the amount of sugar in the ice itself. As an Italian Ice is entirely water and sugar, you can estimate the calorie count based on the sugar content: roughly 4.5 calories for every gram of sugar.

But it is rarely that simple to deduce calorie calorie content when eating out. Restaurants have started posting calorie content of their menus. I have stood at the counter on many occasions and wondered what on earth I could eat, given the posted facts. Now, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, those numbers, which many consumer have found discouraging, may not even give us the entire story. According to the article, the calorie counts may be underestimated. Scripps television stations sent out several dishes and found underestimates by up to 33%. The restaurants respond that not all dishes can be prepared at all the restaurants the same way. Okay….

I worked for a very small restaurant chain very briefly a few years ago. This place prided itself on being fast, relatively inexpensive and healthy. They posted calorie content before it was the law. But they had arrived at their numbers using software that they had downloaded off the internet– not quite food science and certainly not consumer friendly. When customers started to question the numbers, ownership decided that it was time to send out the food and get accurate readings. But then they found that food testing labs can be difficult to work with and extremely expensive. Ownership didn’t like the numbers that were coming back in and, due to some numbers that were obviously inaccurate (including sodium levels in a salt free dish) decided that the labs should be scrapped. When last I checked, they were using the internet numbers. Scripps can send out one or two dishes for an investigative piece, but for the restaurant to send out the entire menu and get quality, accurate numbers is simply not cost effective.

So where does that leave the us, the consumers? Screwed. We feel that we are so responsible by looking at the calorie contents and making better decisions but then we find out that even those better decisions may be poor. And these little inconsistencies of 50 calories here and 100 calories there can lead to carrying additional weight over the course of a week or a month. The most responsible thing we can do is…….

…..avoid the fast food restaurants altogether. I know sometimes it’s impossible to avoid them– trust me, I just got in off a big business trip and there are many places where the options are few and far between. But we have to become aware of eating strategies. Fast food is fast food is fast food. And if you are forced into making the best possible choice in a bad situation, then be aware that you may have to take a little more time to figure out when and where you are going to eat.

In the meantime, we can only hope that someone somewhere is thinking about enforcing some sort of quality control on the posting. Getting restaurants to post them was the first victory. Now we need to insure that the numbers are accurate.

It’s not as easy as This Is Why You’re Fat vs. This Is Why You’re Thin.

Two fun studies, both from the Journal of Consumer Research: the first tells us that when we are given nutritional information on a menu, we are more likely to choose the healthier option; the second says that having a healthier option on a menu, like a salad, is more likely to drive us toward the unhealthy, like fries. Apparently, seeing the healthy option displayed before us allows us to lower our guards and reach for something that we know is not as healthy ( 10% of the test subjects from a “no-salad” menu ordered fries, as opposed to 33% who ordered fries when given the option of salad). But if we have the nutritional information in front of us, then we are more likely to make the healthier choice.

I’m not quite sure how that works for me. True story– we took the kids to Five Guys Burgers on Friday because all the reviews say that the burgers are OUT OF CONTROL. And they were kind enough to print calorie counts next to each dish. In the end, I consumed about 2000 calories, which is usually my daily total (funny side note– went home and passed out immediately).

What’s your habit? Will you ask to replace the fries with salad? Does the nutritional information help to guide you? Let us know if the Journal for Consumer Research is really on the money.