L OCAL LIVING
District
15 DC
starts with sugar, then wheat flour. (Allergy alert! People with gluten intolerance or celiac disease should read labels extra carefully. You’d be surprised how many candies contain wheat.) You don’t get to the main event, chocolate, until the fifth ingredient. The first ingredient in a Baby Ruth bar is sugar, then roasted peanuts, then corn syrup. The bars also contain hydrogenated palm kernel and coconut oil; these count as trans fats, which are bad for your cardiovascular system. Ingredient No. 7 is cocoa, right after high-fructose corn syrup. A Snickers bar lists milk chocolate as its first ingredient and peanuts second. Next on the list is corn syrup, followed by sugar. Because ingredients are listed in descending order by weight, if I’m in the mood for chocolate, I’d rather see it listed first than seventh. For me, a Snickers bar is the most satisfying of mainstream candies, so why waste calories on anything less?
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What is your Halloween candy game plan?
Let us know by voting in our Halloween candy poll at
voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup, under the post titled “Haunted by Halloween candy?”
This Halloween season, I plan to:
Indulge in a really special, though highly caloric, piece of candy every day.
Satisfy my sweet tooth with low-fat, lower-calorie treats.
Steer clear of candy; I can’t trust myself to know when to quit.
Stay away from sweets; I don’t like or need them.
Stick my face in a bowl of candy corn and inhale.
Think that coconut in Mounds and Almond Joy makes those bars healthful? Think again. The first ingredient in each is corn syrup, and a single bar has 80 calories, half from fat. Each supplies a gram of dietary fiber, which is not enough to do you any good, and no different from many other bars. Plus, they have high percentages of saturated fat among chocolate bars: 18 percent of the daily value for saturated fat for Mounds, 15 percent for Almond Joy. A Nestle’s Crunch bar is a good bet:
Sixty calories, about half from fat, and nothing in it but milk chocolate and crisped rice. Similarly, a plain Hershey’s bar has about 66 calories, half of them from fat (including 10 mg of cholesterol). But its only ingredient is milk chocolate. Add almonds and that same 14 grams yields about 73 calories, 43 from fat. Plain M&M’s have about 73 calories, 30 from fat, and 5 mg of cholesterol. Add peanuts and, in 18 grams, you get 90 calories, 45 from fat. Like the almonds in Almond Joy, those peanuts don’t appear to add much nutritional value.
natural source of fruit antioxidants.” Yes, raisins contain some antioxidant vitamins, but not enough to show up on the Nutrition Facts panel. Vitamin A and Vitamin C values are listed as zero. Junior Mints and York Peppermint Patties score well in the low-fat category. An 18-gram box of Junior Mints has 80 calories, 15 from fat. The first ingredient is sugar, the second semi-sweet chocolate, the third corn syrup. A 14-gram Peppermint Patty has 50 calories, more than 8 from fat, but corn syrup comes ahead of semisweet chocolate, and after sugar, on the ingredient list. It also contains egg whites (allergy alert!).
Not chocolate but still candy
Non-chocolate treats are mostly gobs of sugar. But they’re generally lower in fat and calories than chocolate-centric items. A 14-gram serving of strawberry Twizzlers has 43 calories, only about 3 of them from fat. The ingredient list starts with corn syrup, enriched wheat flour (allergy alert!) and sugar. Starburst (15 grams has 60 calories, around 11 from fat) and Skittles (about 15 grams has 60 calories, about 7 from fat) are not only lower in fat, but each is fortified with Vitamin C. Those servings each deliver just over 10 percent of your daily value for that nutrient. But let’s be real: We
shouldn’t depend on candy for our daily value of
Some chocolate-coated candies are low
in fat. A serving of Raisinets has about 63 calories and about 23 from fat, which the package represents as “30 percent less fat than the leading chocolate brands.” But don’t be swayed by the package note that calls Raisinets “a
anything. It’s up to you to decide whether these candies’ appeal is strong, vitamins aside. For me, they don’t make the cut. You really have to be a sugar fiend to want to waste calories on SweeTarts or Smarties. A serving of either has 50 calories
and no fat, but there’s nothing particularly satisfying among the mostly sugar ingredients. (Who has ever had a dextrose craving?) SweeTarts also contain whey (allergy alert!). I used to love candy corn so much, I could eat it by the fistful. Now the sight of it hurts my teeth. If you’re a fan, buy it in trick-or-treat-ready packages for portion control: A 15-gram pouch has about 50 calories and no fat. Of course, it’s nothing but sugar and salt. The honey on the ingredient list may sound healthful, but it’s nutritionally no different from any other sugar. If you’re eating from the office candy bowl, that trick-or-treat portion equals only about eight pieces. Steer clear unless you can count out your serving and stick to it.
EVY MAGES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
A bomb in Iraq put an abrupt end to Will Reynolds’s running days, but not his marathoning days.
22 surgeries later . . . Will Reynolds took up
marathoning while stationed in South Korea and completed two races there. But when an improvised explosive device went off about six feet away from the infantryman in southwest Baghdad one day in 2004, it shattered his lower femur and knee, severed two large arteries and ended Reynolds’s running days not long after they had begun. Twenty-two surgeries later,
Reynolds walks with a cane and handcycles with a passion you’d expect from someone who lost a sport he loved — and nearly lost his life. His left leg is fused at the knee, making walking difficult and running impossible.
My top choice among the low-fat options? The Tootsie Pop, hands down. A single pop has 60 calories and no fat. Sure, it’s the same mix of sugar, corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oil you see elsewhere. But it takes a long time to eat (unless you’re one of those people who bites through to the filling), and there’s that rewarding Tootsie Roll treat at the end. I know that counting calories and fat grams sucks some of the fun out of the holiday. But better to be armed with information so you can choose wisely, right? Otherwise you might just fall face first into that plastic jack-o-lantern and end up feeling crummy about your candy-bloated self when you finally come up for air.
localliving@washpost.com
ON WASHINGTONPOST.COM 6
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But he swims, rides his bike 12 miles each way to work and on Oct. 31 expects to cover the 26.2 miles of the Marine Corps Marathon in a little more than 90 minutes on his handcycle. He placed fourth in that division at the Boston Marathon in April and expects to compete with the best in his division at Marine Corps.
“I just really love cardio work,”
Reynolds, 29, says matter-of-factly. “I just like being able to step out your door and get some cardio in.” He bicycles primarily with one leg and says he would never give it up. “A lot of times you clear your head and frame your day and do a lot of planning that you want to do. The endorphins . . . I think are a big reason a lot of people do it. I always feel great when I get to work. I always feel great when I get home.” The Rockville resident is part of
Team Red, White and Blue, which raises money through endurance events to help wounded vets.
—L.B.
misfits from 13
THE WASHINGTON POST • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2010
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