Shocking News Cinema Snacks Are Fattening

Several media outlets today reported:

Popcorn in Movie Cinemas is fattening and high in calories, not to mention outrageously over priced (they didn't report the last part that's just my added editorial comment).

This is news?

I'm pretty sure I've recounted here my conversation with refreshment stand help that I've had many times over the years when contemplating the temptation of ordering some of the evil highly caloric puffed corn we love so much and for some reason has become so synonymous to the movie going experience.

In bright lights the sign behind the counter says Popcorn with Butter! There are pictures of melting butter being lovingly pour over light and delicious kernels of perfected popped corn.

The conversation would go like this:

"would you like butter on your popcorn?"

"Is it real butter?"

"um, no"

In such a litigious country it is mind boggling to me that somehow lawyer with a fat kid hasn't sued cinemas for perpetrating this lie?

Besides being bad for you and fattening, popcorn is also a GMO (genetically modified organism).
I mean if you're going to spend all that money on a GM corn product why not just buy stocks in Monsanto?

Anyway it seems to me absurd that all of a sudden today I've read on several sites about this study that tells the truth about how soda and popcorn (both GM corn products in this country - high fructose corn syrup in the regular soda or cancer causeing chemicals in the diet ones).

As initially reported by CBS:

According to laboratory analysis conducted by the Center for Science and Public Interest (CSPI), the concessions from Regal, the country's biggest movie chain, have 1,160 calories and three days worth - 60 grams - of fat. Regal said that the medium popcorn had 720 calories and the large had 960, but CSPI's tests found those numbers to be understated. A small popcorn at Regal had 670 calories - the same as a Pizza Hut Personal Pepperoni Pan Pizza. Even if you share a small popcorn - it's still about a day's worth of saturated fat per person, according to CSPI.

Here's my take on this, everyone understands that this is a treat and junk food so it's obviously not going to be good for you, but why on earth can't they just make it with real ingredients? Why not offer air popped organic non GMO local corn popcorn? With real butter, it used to be real I remember when I worked in a movie cinema as a teenager we would put a huge chunk of butter into the back of the butter melting machine.

No one expects treats to necessarily be healthy, but hre is an example of something that could be made so much tastier and healthier and better for us and the planet if we just made it with something other then chemicals and partially hydrogenated tropical oils.

Cinema chains want the biggest bang for their buck and real ingredients cost too much.

Fuck your health it's about their bottom line.

And as long as people are willing to buy it why should they change? It's like MacDonalds or smoking, no matter how much people know how bad something might be for you it doesn't mean they are going to stop doing it.

For me in the end it comes down to taste. I'd rather bring some good popcorn into the theater in my knapsack then spend the money on the scrappy stuff they sell. This suggests to me that there is a market for something better, but apparently not a big enough of one to bother to offer an option - something good, old fashioned, not genetically modified, made with real butter and in the instance of soda real sugar.