Basic Pursuits

This weekend I had the pleasure of visiting with a friend in a small town in central Florida called Aripeka.

We could have prepared our own food, but we chose instead to be lazy bachelors and ate out every meal. This led to eating a lot of French fries. In the restaurants that we went to, every sandwich came with French fries. And I was relaxing and enjoying getting away from my routine and saying, "what the hell. I gotta eat." So I ate a bunch of French fries.

When I got back to town on Sunday, I was shocked when I logged my food for the previous two days. I figured about two cups of fries per serving and used the Wendy's medium order of fries as my proxy. I had eaten a lot of junk calories.

Each Wendy's medium order has 453 calories. The majority of those calories come from starchy carbohydrates and fat: 224 and 207 respectively. Forty-five of those fat calories come from trans fat. And who knows what those 56 carbs are doing to your sugar balance?

For the amount of calories that come with French fries, they are pretty empty of vitamins and minerals.

Conclusion: it's damn near impossible to eat French fries without taking in a lot of extra, empty, junk calories. If you are trying to lose weight, or even maintain weight, French fries have to be off the menu.