Perceptions on What is "Healthy"

I was leaving the gym yesterday evening with my Son and noticed the crowd at the “juice bar”.  A few people were sucking down their frozen smoothies and all I could think of is that they should have just stayed home since they probably just negated all the calorie burn during their workouts.  In recent days, I’ve become sensitive to calorie intake, especially empty calories. 

Olga and I learned a valuable lesson last week when we went to a local Smoothie King with a $10 Groupon.  You’d think their choices would be healthy, especially the so-called “Trim Down” smoothies.  Ha!  Olga got a small (didn’t know 20oz was considered “small”).  And, I got a “Snack Right” smoothie, which was touted as “These smoothies are low fat and are a great snack”.  Snack?  Really???  I wanted a “small”, too, but we didn’t exceed the Groupon total, so I got the medium, instead.  Unbeknownst to me, the “medium” was 32oz!!!

Here are the facts, straight from the Smoothie King website…

Olga’s so-called “Trim Down” smoothie had 392 calories and a whopping 73 grams of sugar!  WTF!  My “Snack Right”, ahem, “medium” smoothie had 657 calories and an astounding 156 grams of sugar!!!  Keep in mind that Olga and I are watching our sugar intake fastidiously.  The reason we are aware of the nutrition data was due to how horrible we began feeling, physically and mentally, after beginning our quest to consume our respective smoothies.  We researched the nutrition pages on the Smoothie King website when we got home out of curiosity to garner any information that would lead us to understanding on why we were feeling “off” after drinking the smoothies.

What if I told you that a good old fashioned Coca-Cola 1.25 liter bottle has less calories and less sugar than my smoothie?  It’s true—500 calories and 135 grams of sugar.  Straight from their website nutrition pages.

The point of all of this is how easily most of us are fooled by the perception of what is considered healthy and good for us.  Someone just try and convince me that  a “Snack Right” smoothie containing 657 calories is truly a snack.  That’s a damn meal!!!  No wonder there are guys walking around looking like they’re pregnant or carrying a pony keg under their shirt. I’m not absolving people of responsibility for consuming excess calories, but just trying to raise awareness that our perceptions aren’t always accurate related to how many calories each of us consumes each day.  Instead of going to Smoothie King, we should have just gone to the bar around the block and had an 12oz Fat Tire (155 calories).  Makes the beer seem like a health food, doesn’t it?