Sticker Shock

If you’ve ever shopped for a car, appliance, or even clothes you’ve probably had this experience – you check the price tag and are flabbergasted by what you see. I recently saw a sink at a home improvement store that was over $2,000 – a sink (oh the vacation I could take with that chunk of change)!

Anyway, even with all of my nutrition science training, I’m still sometimes astonished by the calorie levels in various foods. And if I’m surprised, you’ll probably be too. Here are a few stunners along with the number of hours and minutes a 150 pound person would need to walk (at 4 miles per hour) to burn them off:

One 22 ounce* acai (the “hot” fruit everyone’s talking about) smoothie from Planet Smoothie – 510 calories – 1 hour 53 minutes

One stick of butter – 800 calories – 2 hours 58 minutes

One 15 ounce* jar Cheese Whiz – 1,170 calories – 4 hours 20 minutes

One whole Tombstone frozen pepperoni pizza – 1,560 calories - 5 hours 46 minutes

One 16 ounce* tub Betty Crocker Rich and Creamy chocolate frosting – 1,950 – 7 hours 13 minutes

*Reference – 1 can of soda = 12 ounces

It pays to read labels AND do the math (i.e. calories are listed per serving; if there are 13 servings per jar as with Cheese Whiz, and your recipe calls for the whole jar, you must multiply those calories by 13!).

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