Muffin Tops and Fruit Salad: Which is Better for Weight Loss?
So I’m at my favorite coffee shop the other day getting settled in for my morning routine of coffee, a snack, and some writing. I go up to the counter and order a coffee and a muffin. The girl behind the counter kinda knows me now and was even helping me count glasses of water a few weeks ago when I was experimenting with a water load. The point is she has some idea that I’m involved in health/fitness/working out as a career and thinks I’m ‘into health’ or something like that.
Would combining the fruit salad with the muffin make it healthier?
So when I simply ordered a muffin and coffee she responded with this statement “Don’t you want to add a fruit salad to that to make it healthy?”
To which I replied “oh that’s not necessary, I’m just gonna rip the top off the muffin and eat it, and throw out the bottom”
After I said that I got a lecture about being wasteful and starving people etc…as if my overeating on muffins and fruit salad is somehow going to solve the worlds food problems.
The moral of the story is that the prevailing mentality is that you can add more food and thus more calories to a meal in order to somehow make it more ‘healthy’.
Lets just look at the two options.We’ll take her option first.
She was suggesting I have a coffee (approx 100 calories) + a full muffin (approx 400 calories) + fruit salad (approx 150 calories) for a grand total of 650 calories for my morning snack.
My suggestion was to have a coffee (100 calories) + half a muffin (approx 200 calories) for a grand total of 300 calories for a very satisfying morning coffee and snack.
This is a classic example of the gap in understanding between what really matters when it comes to health, weight loss, and looking and feeling your best.
We cannot simply add more ‘healthy’ items to a meal to offset the supposed ‘unhealthy’ ones.
The total calories will always matter more than what those calories are comprised of.
This is to say nothing about the fact that I was not intending to eat only muffins and coffee all day. For my preference on that particular day, a coffee and half a muffin is exactly what I wanted and it fits with my health/fitness goals. There was plenty of time and opportunity for me to get my fill of veggies, fruit, and other higher fiber and so called ‘healthy’ items later that day.
The point is there is no perfect foods to eat, or perfect meal combinations to have. If you want a muffin go ahead and have one. If maintaining a particular body shape/weight/size/look matters to you then perhaps you need to pay attention to how many muffins you eat, or how big they are (in which case you can use the muffin top only technique) instead of either eliminating them all together or even worse, adding even more food to your muffin snack just to make it seem healthier.
In the end total calories and how much you exercise is going to affect your overall health to a far greater degree than a complicated and calculated mix of ‘the right foods’.
John
9 Responses to “Muffin Tops and Fruit Salad: Which is Better for Weight Loss?”
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August 29th, 2011 at 4:29 pm
I know exactly what you are talking about when you said you got a lecture about being wasteful.
I always got comments when I’m full or don’t want to overeat that I’m throwing away food that costs money and that there are people that would kill for this.
However, like you said me eating it won’t help those people. So, it’s not that I’m not grateful for having the abundance of food, I just will rather pay the money that I’m “wasting” to not have this food around my waist.
Funny enough I don’t think anyone would tell you that you are wasting food when you would throw up, which has the same outcome – you don’t eat it.
Also, I think that lots of people would surprised by how much food is thrown away in restaurants, fast foods and supermarkets.
August 29th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
Bottom line: excess food is wasted wherever it goes. Why would you want to treat your body as a trash can?
August 30th, 2011 at 6:43 pm
John, your story is very representative of the general understanding of “healthy eating.”
I think the root of the cause is twofold:
1. Not understanding that body fat is the single most impactful thing you can do to improve one’s health. Your mile run time or the amount of fruit you eat has nothing do with it.
2. People grossly overestimate how much “nutrients” they need.
I think these 2 drive most people’s misunderstanding of what it takes to be healthy (barring any extenuating medical conditions).
To make matters worse, if someone were to understanding these 2 points, most would also not know that body fat is just a matter of calories, i.e. it’s how much you eat rather than what you eat. The girl behind the counter suggested a fruit salad probably because she was a victim of “what you eat matters” thinking. Somehow, she thinks that ADDING “healthy” food makes you healthy.
August 30th, 2011 at 6:45 pm
“Bottom line: excess food is wasted wherever it goes. Why would you want to treat your body as a trash can?”
Haha, that’s brilliant! Stealing this the next time someone stands on a moral pedestal.
August 31st, 2011 at 11:16 am
John come on. You mean I can’t go an order a 1 pound bacon BBQ cheeseburger and then add the grilled veggies cooked in a stick of butter and a side salad with crotons, 3 servings of shredded cheese and 4 servings of thousand island dressing to make it a healthy meal!
September 11th, 2011 at 1:46 am
how many times did i overeat *healthy food?* Too many too count … lol … it always surprises me when people comment when you don’t finish your plate or throw food away … as portions served by most eating establisbments are ENORMOUS:)and TOO MUCH!!!!
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