Healthy Eating Tip for Eating Out - Not ordering (or avoiding) bar snacks
Many pubs and bars (including those in restaurants) will serve you free bowls of nuts, crisps or other savoury snacks. And there’s a good reason why. The snacks served are nearly always the salty variety and it’s actually a ploy to make you thirsty so you’ll buy more drinks!
The snacks may be free, but they’re certainly not free of calories – a couple of handful of salted peanuts can easily contain over 500 calories – equivalent to 2 Portions in the Meat & alternative section on your Nutrition Card®. And that’s before you’ve enjoyed your drink or even sat down to eat!
Common Myths & Misconceptions
- “A couple of little bar snacks won’t hurt” – Bar snacks can be very high in calories. You can often wolf down several handfuls without thinking. If you are in restaurant bar, you’ll probably be quite hungry, so being presented with a bowl of nibbles could be hard to resist. Nuts can be especially hard to ignore and are very high in calories. Just two handfuls (about 100g) can contain as much as 500 calories – over a third of a woman's daily calorie allowance on a typical weight loss weight!
Tips & Tricks
- If you have the will power, take a couple of whatever’s served (that’s not a couple of handfuls but several nuts, corn chips etc…) and leave the rest.
- If you don’t think you can resist them, move them out of arm's reach or otherwise kindly thank the bar person and ask them to take the bowl away.
- Eat whatever’s served in single units and they will last longer – so, eat a single corn chip, peanut etc at a time, rather than a mouthful of them.
- If you’re with other people, ask them not to offer you any – if they ask you why and you don’t wish them to know the reason, tell them you don’t want to spoil your meal.
- Avoiding these situations is not always possible, so be prepared to deal with ‘bar snack dilemma’ before it happens!
- Don’t forget to reward yourself mentally when you succeed, the satisfaction of avoiding the bar snack will bring you much longer satisfaction than eating them will.
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