Menu Confidential
Megan Ogilvie is the health reporter for the Toronto Star, and she recently penned the fascinating read Menu Confidential. Essentially, it’s a guide to conquering the calories, sodium and fats that are hiding in the foods you love to eat outside of the home, and my family is finding it completely fascinating.
Divided into categories like Breakfast, Snacks, Fast Food, Dining Out, Grab and Go at the Grocery Store, and Canadian Classics, this book will tell you just how many calories are in your favourite movie theatre popcorn, Tim Horton’s muffin or chain restaurant chocolate milkshake.
Loaded with the detailed analysis of more than 150 foods, the book is packed with practical advice on navigating kids menus, best bets for eating at the food court and the low-down on which store-bought muffin has the best nutritional value.
My kids have spent a few hours perusing the pages of the book. Filled with colourful pictures and punchy pockets of text, it’s very reader-friendly and is an excellent resource for the family library, especially when you have older kids who are eating on their own’away from home’a little more often.
We were very surprised to learn that an Ikea cinnamon bun with frosting only has 276 calories’I certainly thought it would be more’and 6 grams of fat, and that your average diner breakfast typically packs close to a whopping 1,000 calories with more than 50 grams of fat.
Now I turn it over to you’do you know how many calories and grams of fat are in a medium-size bag of movie theatre popcorn? Share your guesses and I’ll come back to reveal the answer.
