Healthful Dining At Your Desk
hello and welcome to dining debunkedepisode 1. so you guys seemed to really enjoy my healthy choices at fast foodrestaurants vlog that i did a while ago and i've gotten a lot of requests to do morestuff similar to that so i thought we would sort of make it into a serieswhere i take you with me out to eat at chain restaurants and we can go throughthe menu together go through the nutrition together and if you do enjoythis type of video don't forget to give it a thumbs up and comment below so that iknow that you want me to make more. so without further ado, first up is panera bread. one ofthe problems with panera is there are not a ton of choices that are actually healthychoices which is weird because it seems
like a healthy choice like it has a nice designand comfortable ambience and feels like the sort of upscale cafe. the good thingis that they do make their nutrition accessible so you can find this pdf withtheir nutrition online at their website and most chain restaurant do that now which is great. the biggest problem with making thisaccessible is that most people don't know how to read it properly, or theydon't know what they're looking for, or they are only looking for the thingsthat they've heard about before so they know, "oh i'm supposed to have somethinglower in calories" or "i hear carbs are bad" or "fat is bad" or these generalizations that aren'tnecessarily true. so when they see all
this is x amount of calories or fat or carbsthey don't really know what it means and having the nutrition therejust doesn't do anything for those people. so it is up to you to educateyourself to learn how to read those labels properly so that you can makehealthy choices without picking the thing that's you know the lowest incalories or fat because that's not always the best as we are going to seetoday. i personally try to think of food as fuel. so when i decide to eatsomething i try to think is this option going to fuel my body? is it going togive me you know nutrients that are gonna make me feel good and feel full? now thatdoesn't mean that every single meal that
i consume at all times as fuelsometimes i indulge sometimes i want to get the less healthy thing. the purposeof this is not for me to tell you to not get the less healthy thing. if youwant to do that's perfectly fine. i'm just trying to help show you if you want togo to panera and you're trying to stay on track to keep making healthy choiceswhat do you want to look for and what do you want to avoid. so yeah i just want to put thatlittle disclaimer out there for this episode in any of these dining debunkedepisodes that we may do in the future. i am not telling you to eat or not eat atthese places. i'm not telling you that any of the menu items are good or bad orthat they must be avoided or that
you must eat them. i want you to pickwhatever works for your lifestyle i am simply reading the nutrition to you andgoing through it with you i'm just making information more accessible. i'mnot adding any other opinions to that. finally let's get to the nutrition. i am goingto skip the bakery items and the breads because we can assume that pastriesare going to be higher in calories and fat and obviously not the healthiest choice andin this video i really want to focus on the things that people think are healthier. ido want to stop briefly at the fruit smoothies. so they really market theseto seem like a healthy choice but when you look at the nutrition everysingle one of them makes a health claim
and i've told you that before healthclaims are a red flag. so it says fat free you know green passion parissmoothie, low fat, low fat, superfruit power, low fat, low fat, all these claims theyreally want you to think that it's healthy. let's just look at the low-fat wildberry smoothie. the one smoothie is 340 calories, it does only have 1.5 grams of fatso it is low-fat, it's not a false claim but why do they need to claim that? well there are 75 grams of carbs in this smoothie 68 of which are sugar. now a lot ofpeople might think oh that's okay because it's natural it's from fruit butthat's not exactly true when you look at the ingredients which are not listed inthis pdf but you can find them on the
panera website. what's sweetening thesmoothies are concentrate. so i'm not going to go into what concentrate is icould talk about it all day long but pretty much it's very very concentratedfruit juice so there is a lot more sugar than you really need in it. if you guys areinterested in me doing a video on concentrated fruit juices and smoothiesand stuff like that leave a comment below so that i know buti'm not going to get into it today. so let's start with paninis and sandwiches. the best option macronutrient wise is the smoked turkeybreast sandwich on country. the whole sandwhich is only 430 calories, 3.5 grams of fat,
67 grams of carbs so still a little high on the cardsbut it's a pretty decent sized sandwich. the macros don't seem terrible but thisis actually not the sandwich that i would recommend people choose. now why isthat? reason number one, it is on country bread which is just white bread. so weobviously want to go for whole wheat options when we can because we want to gowith whole grains and get more fiber. i have done an entire video on how tochoose bread so if you're interested i will link that in the description boxbelow. not gonna talk about it today. reason number two, the micros so themicronutrients. most people, maybe not you, a lot of people might look at this andsee "oh if i get half of the sandwich it's
only 220 calories. well that's pretty low that's pretty good and it's only 2 grams of fat. butwhat they don't see is the sodium. so 890 milligrams in half of the sandwich. that means the entire sandwich is 1790. 1,790 milligrams of sodium in that sandwich. nowthis is where it becomes an issue where if people don't know how to read thisproperly that number doesn't mean anything to them. if they don't know howmuch sodium they're supposed to be consuming then they don't know if that's ahigh number or not. to give you some perspective the american heartassociation recommends that we consume
1,500 milligrams or less of sodium perday. that's debatable. i'm not saying they're right or wrong but it is recommended fora reason. so what to take from that is 1790 in the entire sandwich is moresodium than is recommended for an entire day. so my point is just because it is alower-calorie option doesn't mean it is the healthiest option. now healthy is arelative term so i really hate using it in this context because to somepeople you know the lowest calorie is gonna be the healthiest and to some thelowest sodium is goinna be the healthiest and some the highest protein is going to be the healthiest. so you know take it with a grain of salt but just understand that 220 calories doesn't make this healthy. let'smove on from the sandwiches. alright, salad. if
your salad still has 30 to 40grams of carbs in it, is it really any better than eating the sandwich? now alot of people would debate me on this. i'm not telling you to go eat thesandwich instead of the salad i'm saying take a closer look at what is in yoursalad. if you look at these salads listed here not only are the cards high butthe fat you know you've got 30 to 40 or more grams of fat in so manyof these and why is that? probably the dressing. let's take alook at one specifically. the mediterranean chicken and quinoa salad.sounds really healthy right? 38 grams of fat, 580 calories in the whole salad ok ican you know i can buy it i guess but if
you look at the dressing that comes withthat salad which is the greek herb vinaigrette it is 210 calories and 23 grams of fat just in the dressing. so if you've got 38 gramsof fat in the salad and 23 of those grams are from the dressing alonethat's a lot. now you could of course get the dressing on the side so that you'rein control of how much you're eating and that will you know lower the fat i'msure a bit but there might be other ingredients that you're not thinkingabout like nuts or avocado or seeds and even though those are healthy choices westill have to be aware of the overall amount of fat we're consuming. so what's theperspective on that? the us department of
health and human services recommends 20to 35 percent of your daily calories are from fat. again very debatable my goal today isnot to debate you on nutrition it is to simply provide you the facts. so if youare consuming 1,500 to 2,000 calories a day which is pretty average you knowmaybe a little higher than that, that would mean you're getting 30 to40 grams of fat a day. so suddenly this healthy choice of a salad becomesyour entire amount of fat for the day, 38 grams that's a lot. now if you areconcerned about how many grams or milligrams of these macro or micronutrients that you should be specifically consuming i do recommendthat you talk to your doctor. i am simply
referencing generalized recommendationamounts for educational purposes. i'm not giving specific advice for any person. onto the soups. another deceivinglyunhealthy choice at panera, many of these at least. right off the bat we know thebreadbowl is going to add a lot of calories and a lot of carbs to whatever soup youget. it looks like the breadbowl alone is almost 550 calories, a 120grams of carbs, and 900 milligrams of sodium. just the bowl. soonto the soups. here we go again with the health claims. low-fat chicken orzo soup.the bowl is only 180 calories, it's only 5 grams of fat, but there are 1340, 1,340milligrams of sodium.
or the low-fat all natural chickennoodle soup the bowl 130 calories, 1.5 grams of fatreally awesome macros right but 1,440 milligrams of sodium. that is high. and same with the broth bowl. the lentil quinoabowl with chicken sounds super healthy 1,370 milligrams of sodium. so again lower in calories not necessarily morenutritious. and shout out to my boy vegetarian creamy tomato soup you arereally tasty but there are 32 grams of fat and 33 grams of carbs in you. why? whyin a soup? you know it's vegetarian and it might be there might be some tomatoin it but this is still not exactly the
fuel i want for my body. a lot of peoplemight go in and think 'oh i'll get the you pick two and i will get a salad and the mac andcheese' because you know it's a smaller portion of the mac and cheese and havingthe salad to balance it out and if you've thought this way before don't worryyou're not alone. i used to do this myself and that is why you know i, i'vestarted learning how to read these on my own because it's easy to make thatmistake. you know a lot of people might even, even be moderately aware of whatthey're ordering. they know that that small cup of mac and cheese is 490 calories, 30grams of fat. but what they don't think about is that the salad even though it'sonly an extra 190 calories they're like
you know that only make it 680 calories.that's not so bad for my lunch 680 calories. but then what about the 47grams of fat? even if they're aware of that are they aware that you know 570 milligrams of sodium + 1,020 milligram, so you're at1,590 milligrams of sodium now from just this salad and mac and cheese. then youadd in that extra french baguette which is just kind of defaulted, they just putit on your plate even if we don't ask for it and you're adding an extra 180 calories,440 milligrams of sodium. so your entire meal now racksup a whopping 2,190 milligrams of sodium from just mac and cheese, salad, and apiece of bread. again if you've done this
before you're not alone i'm right therewith you i'm just saying this is why it is important that now we together startto learn how to read these. it's not science, it's just reading but it's knowinghow to read them properly. so now we have come to the point in the video weactually get to go in to eat some food. what shall i order? alright, so i used to order the powerbowls that panera had but i guess they discontinued those so i can't order those anymore. they havelike a power hummus bowl and it was pretty tasty and really good stats but it's gone. so i had tomake a new choice today. so a lot of you guys know i am not a huge salad person.when i go out to eat i pretty much want
to order all the other deliciousness andnot eat a salad right. but one thing that i've come to find in the past few monthsbecause i've been eating out more is i sometimes like getting a salad wheni'm out because they're preparing it. they're you know having to do all thecutting and the prepping and i don't do that at home and i don't want to spendtime doing it at home. so when i go out i get like all these great fruits andvegetables and i don't have to do the work. so sometimes i like ordering a salad and atpanera because you can do the you pick two i can get a salad and something else.so that's what i did today. i got the strawberry, poppyseed, and chicken saladand it is the half size and the macros
on that are pretty good. 170 calories, 7 grams of fat, 150 milligrams of sodium, 16 grams of carbs 3 of whichare fiber, and 15 grams of protein. so it's a decent choice and i also got asandwich with that. i got the tuna salad sandwich and it comes on honey wheat usually but i asked if they had whole wheat and they did so i got that instead. half of it is 260 calories, 8 grams of fat, 550 milligrams of sodium, 32 grams ofcarbs, and 14 grams of protein and instead of the french baguette or thebread on the side i just went for the apple.
the entire macros for this are 510 calories which is pretty good. it's a prettysolid lunch it's 15 grams of fat, 52 grams of carbs which is kind of high but iknow that a lot of those cards are coming from natural sugars from my applefrom the fruit in my salad and also it has 10 grams of fiber here which is great. i have 29 grams of protein and i have700 milligrams sodium. so what i like about this meal is i get my veggies in, iget to enjoy my veggies more because there's fruit on top of the veggies andi still get to enjoy a sandwich and a decent amount of protein in the entirething. i wish it could be gluten-free
bread but hey ya can't get everything. so mybiggest kind of concern with this meal is the sodium and it's not like out of controlhigh but it's definitely higher than if i made this entire meal at home on myown. as you will see you'll find that sodium will be a recurring issue withthis series i'm sure. anytime you go out to eat they're just inherently going to add a lot more salt. now it's important to note that ididn't choose this meal because it's the healthiest macronutrient wise. i chose itbecause it fits my lifestyle and my preferences. so the other thing is youdon't wanna go and order something just because it's the healthiest if you don'twant to eat right? like i tried to get something
that i actually want to eat. if iactually wanted to pick the healthiest thing on the menu it probably would havebeen the classic salad with chicken. which i just probably wouldn't haveenjoyed eating as much. just a bunch of vegetables and some chicken. so now i'mgetting to enjoy myself a little bit more and not feel bad and that isthe point. at the end of the day panera sort of makes me madbecause they don't have a ton of choices and i think that will be a problem witha lot of places especially because of the sodium. but that doesn't mean thata healthy choice can't be made. it just means we have to you know take theresponsibility to do our own research
and figure out what is available andwhat's actually on the label of the food that we eating. if you have a healthy goto at panera please comment below and let me know. and if you want me to do more ofthese let me know, if you have any ideas of places you want me to go. don't forgetto give this video a thumbs up because that really does help give me greatfeedback letting me know what you guys like and just before going i please, please,please ask you i can't ask you enough to be open-minded with this series. this isn'tme telling you what to do or that you're doing anything you know right or wrongi'm just trying to bring awareness to what's actually out there and
you know i'm just really i'm really justreading you the label. if you're like whatever i love my mac and cheese a panera, i'm going to eat it every time.go for it. i'm not saying anything against that i'm not judging it. i just want youto go and eat it and know what you're eating. so i hope you found this useful.i hope that you have a great weekend. i will see you on monday and if you'reeating at panera remember it's all a matter of mind over munch.
