“I’m being good and choosing the healthy steamed seafood…” 🥗
Restaurant dining can be a bit of a minefield if you’re trying to watch your calories or lose weight. As I’ve said before, we often have a number of preconceived ideas about which the ‘healthier’ option is and equate that with lower calorie. In reality sometimes things aren’t quite as you’d expect.
Another great example of this is T his particular example is from a Thai restaurant . If you were out for dinner you might assume that something like the steamed seafood is the better choice. It sounds healthy doesn’t it? It’s just steamed squid, sea bass and prawns – no rice or noodles. Tamarind duck noodles – which is a crispy duck leg served on a bed of noodles with a tamarind sauce and the choice is obvious isn’t it?
However that’s not the case. The seafood dish comes in at approx 651 calories, while the noodle dish is approx 520 cals. That’s only 69 cals different – but the seafood dish comes without any accompaniment so chances are you’d want something with it – rice, noodles or some veg or something.
Neither is a large amount of calories for a dinner so both can easily be accommodated within a daily calorie goal. However, this is a great example of how food marketing and naming can shape our assumptions. Dishes that sound fresh, wholesome or fish-based are often automatically labelled as ‘healthy’ and therefore assumed to be lower calorie whereas the natural assumption would be that duck and noodles are high calories (and often they are!).
Now if you want the seafood because you like it then definitely go for it, but if you’re choosing it when you’d prefer the noodles then maybe stick to what you like! That’s why checking the calories can be so important and illuminating! Knowledge is power!
Enjoy 🤗
xxx
