For instance, you can compare a McDonald’s grilled chicken salad to Panera’s grilled chicken Caesar salad, to find that the McDonald’s version is a better choice; or you can compare generic potato chips against Baked Lays and receive a complete nutritional analysis of calories, fat, carbs and protein grams.

Or if all you want to do is do a general query for orange juice, all you do is simply type “orange juice” in the query box and you’ll receive a list of generic OJs from concentrate to freshly squeezed and the nutritional profile of each.

You can also specify your search to a brand. For instance, the query for “Tropicana orange juice” will yield a laundry list of all of Tropicana’s orange juices and how their nutrition stats stack up against each other.

Make sure you take notice of serving sizes. Some are easy to discern while others may require a bit of calculating on your end.

Test your own food questions at TwoFoods and discover for yourself how your favorite eats compare to one another so you can choose the healthier option.

Post from: Diets in Review Blog

TwoFoods: Your Diet’s New Best Friend

We all know that whatever is in a hot dog is questionable, but do you think Joey Chestnut, of the U.S., and Takeu Kobayashi, of Japan, have ever stopped to read the food label on their pile of hot dogs? We think not. The folks at CalorieLab did the math and calculated exactly what the nutritional aftermath looks like when you eat 66 hot dogs on 66 buns (the total consumed by Chestnut in the 2007 event).

That tallies up to 6,600 grams of hot dogs and buns, 14.5 pounds, eaten in a regulation time of 10 minutes! After reading this, we dare you to keep down your hot dogs.

• 19,600 Calories (about 10 days’ worth of calories)
• 1,280g Fat (that’s 2.82 pounds)
• 490g Saturated Fat (1.08 pounds of the unhealthy fat)
• 43,410mg Sodium (1.53 oz, or 1,800 times the RDA)

There’s no telling what kind of health repercussions these two hot dog connoisseurs face afterward. Tummy aches are sure to ensue, and hopefully a lot of fruits and vegetables!

Post from: Diets in Review Blog

Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest Yields Frightening Nutrition Facts

If you haven’t seen the ads yet, Wendy’s has just launched two new flavors to their usual Frosty menu: Frosty-cino and Coffee Toffee Twisted Frosty (try saying that eight times in a row!). As I was doing my search, I didn’t realize that Wendy’s sports a frozen ice cream line that rivals Dairy Queen. From the traditional Frosty, that as a kid I eagerly spooned up, to their newly added frosties including vanilla, strawberry, M & M’s, Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough, and Oreo, the list was much heftier than I remembered as a young girl.  

Unfortunately, much to my dismay, these new Frosties are also pretty hefty when it comes to calories and fat.  Here’s how these new frozen treats stack up in numbers:

Frosty-Cino: One small has 390 calories, 10 grams of fat with six of them being the artery-clogging saturated fat, and 52 grams of sugar! That’s about 13 teaspoons of sugar for those of you who need a visual comparison for a shock factor.

Coffee Toffee Twisted Frosty: One size (it only comes in one size) has 540 calories for the vanilla and 550 for the chocolate. Fat grams are 20 grams for the vanilla and 21 grams for the chocolate, 15 of them for both flavors are saturated fat grams and 69 grams of sugar, or 16.4 teaspoons.

As a self-professed soft-serve ice cream-aholic, it is my summertime duty to at least sample one of these new decadent treats. Given these irreconcilable nutrition stats, I have narrowed my options down to two: Eat the Coffee Toffee Twisted Frosty (’cuz that is the one that is really crying my name) in its entirety and nix lunch and dinner for the day or grab four of my favorite ice cream loving pals, five spoons and pass it around.

Since our taste buds tire of a flavor after a mere three bites, I’m inclined to opt for option number two. That way, I can have my Frosty and not feel like I’m sacrificing a half of day’s worth of food for a few minutes of ice cream decadence.

Post from: Diets in Review Blog

The Skinny on Wendy’s New Twisted Frosties

And my response to that would be, tell us something we didn’t know. While I applaud fast food restaurants for putting healthier items on their menu, when people go there, they are thinking about the greasy fries and burgers, not about a salad. I can’t imagine an inner dialog trying to figure out whether I should get a Whopper, or just a cheeseburger? Nah, when people commit to stepping through those front doors, they are going to indulge.

Christina A. Roberto and her colleagues from Yale surveyed 4311 people buying food at McDonald’s, Burger King, Au Bon Pain, or Starbucks and noted that only six of them, or one-tenth of one percent, took advantage of the available nutrition information while ordering.

You can imagine my surprise when I got to the point in the story where Roberto says why this is happening.

“The way it’s offered now is just not an effective way to disseminate that kind of information to the public,” she said. The study suggests that fast food restaurants need to locate such information in a “really highly visible place, like on a menu board.” (New York is currently doing this.)

This is probably true. But then again, I tend to think that even if it was right in front of people’s eyes at the register, their eyes would still wander up to the alluring photos of burgers and fries.

(via: RedOrbit)

Post from: Diets in Review Blog

Fast Food Patrons Ignore Nutrition Info

There’s no denying Thin Mints are one of the tastiest cookies ever created. They account for 25 percent of the Girl Scouts’ total sales each year. The Lemonades are sweet and refreshing and there is something so comfortable about the Peanut Butter Sandwiches. No matter which $3.50 box you buy, the nutrition facts and ingredients are the last thing those little sweethearts of cookie entrepreneurship want you to see.

So here’s the truth: it’s not nearly as cute as those girls’ pigtails.

Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Sandwiches lead the charge on calories – a serving of each has 160 calories (that’s about three cookies). Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties have the most fat with 8 grams in a serving. The Caramel DeLites have more sugar than any other cookie, with 13 grams per serving. All of the cookies have sodium, little-to-no protein and no fiber.

While the ingredients for each cookie flavor vary, they are fairly similar throughout and nearly all raise red flags. What you can expect to chew with each crunchy bite:
- Enriched Flour
- Sugar
- Vegetable Shortening
- Partially Hydrogenated Oil (trans-fat)
- Corn Syrup and/or High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Artificial Colors and Flavors

The Girl Scouts probably offer plenty of ways to make a donation and support their worthwhile organization, without filling up on their nutritionally-void cookies.

Post from: Diets in Review Blog

Girl Scout Cookie Nutrition Facts