Popcorn is Not a Dieter’s Best Friend

Popcorn is not a healthy dieter’s best friend.

Sure, you may read or heard that otherwise, but you’ve been misled.
Popcorn is sugar
Sure, it can be challenging to resist popcorn and other junk food, especially at movie theaters. The tantalizing sight, smell and possibly sounds of popcorn popping are tough to ignore.

But by gobbling a lot of popcorn, you’re overloading carbage (my phrase for carb gargage).

The equation is simple: Popcorn = Sugar

Just look at nutritional contents of popcorn and you’ll be shocked.

A medium bag, for instance — as shown in the image above from top cartoonist Isabella Bannerman — racks up a whopping 1,200 calories, 60 grams of fat and 83 grams of carbs. (Divide that by four to come up with the teaspoons of sugar.)

In effect, when you mindlessly shovel the contents of a medium popcorn into your mouth, you’re flooding your bloodstream with some 20.75 tsp. of sugar in one sitting, thereby vastly exceeding the American Heart Association’s recommendations of six tsp. of added sugars per day for women. (And I recommend that we consume far less.)

[shareable cite=”Connie Bennett, The Cravings Ninja”] Popcorn is not a dieter’s best friend. Learn the scoop.[/shareable]

Let’s face it though. It’s easy to ignore the popcorn facts. I know I did back in 2012 to mid-2013, while reeling after the death of my mom and struggling with grief and PSTD.

Popcorn is Not a Healthy Diet Food

Now learn more why popcorn is not a healthy diet food.

  • When you eat popcorn, you’re overdosing on sugar, because processed popcorn rapidly turns to sugar in your bloodstream and wreaks havoc on your blood-sugar levels.
  • Overloading on popcorn or other toxic carbs, just like sugary foods, can make you feel wiped out (or sleepless), moody, jittery, and overly emotional.  (These are symptoms of hypoglycemia.)
  • Ultimately, when you pig out on popcorn and other fast carbs, you can eventually get potentially dangerous and deadly diseases as cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.

While kicking my popcorn habit — which kicked into high gear while I was grieving the loss of my mother — I got shocked by alarming nutritional facts, including those from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), which analyzed popcorn from North America’s largest movie theater chains, Regal and AMC.

My New Take on Popcorn

These days, I’m grateful to popcorn. Seriously! Those puffy yellowish-white crunchies my big teacher. Because of my addiction to popcorn and other fast carbs for months after losing my Mom, I became determined to create and discover super-simple ways to Crush Cravings to I could help you.

Stay tuned for a couple of posts with fast, powerful, easy ways to Crush Your Cravings for popcorn, corn nuggets, French fries, and other carbage.

Join the Cravings Conversation: Is popcorn one of your favorite snack foods? Do you nibble on popcorn mindlessly? Have you blown your diet because of popcorn? How do you feel afterwards? Post your comments here.

4 thoughts on “Popcorn is Not a Dieter’s Best Friend

  1. When I make popcorn I use 1/2 cup of organic popcorn, 1 tsp organic coconut oil and pink himalayan salt. I melt grass fed butter with coconut oil and garlic powder to pour on the popcorn. How bad can that be? I don’t know what’s in movie theater popcorn but I know it’s genetically modified.

  2. That sounds a lot more healthy than most popcorn, but you’re still getting lots of carbs at once (although the fat helps). Have you thought about having some protein at the same time? Perhaps a few nuts? A slice of goat cheese?

  3. I love popcorn that’s going to be a hard one. what’s even worse is I eat it with milk before I go to bed.

  4. I pop popcorn on the stove since microwave is so bad. I pop it in ghee…then also melt ghee and put it on it plus himalayan salt. I try so hard not to eat it in the evening but many nights just can’t help it. I do get pulled in at the movies and my hubby wants all that weird butter they have there. I do eat it and can mow down quite a bit. I have had breast cancer 3 times. I know to stay away from sugar but for some reason, I was thinking of popcorn as a grain and fiber for my system. Funny how we try to make it work.

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