/ Rob Beschizza / 6:24 am Wed Mar 23, 2011

Nutritious, nutritious movie popcorn

Movie theater operators would prefer not to say what is in a serving of movie popcorn. (The short version is "about 1200 calories.") [LA Times]

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  1. And what about those theaters that have the dispense your own butter machines….OH GAWD, for the love of the impending triple bypass I will need.

    (Note: I only see about 4 movies a year, so it’s not all that bad.)

  2. A large popcorn is not “a serving.”

    There apparently isn’t a standard serving size of popcorn, but Pop Secret microwave popcorn packages call it 4 cups so I’ll use that as a baseline:

    air-popped popcorn (*), no butter: 120 cal
    butter flavored microwave popcorn: 130-180 cal
    movie theater popcorn, no added butter: 160-330 cal
    movie theater popcorn with butter: 230-443 cal

    From the inconsistent information out there, a small movie popcorn is about 7 cups, medium is 11-16, and large is 21.

    See the book Mindless Eating on studies about how much popcorn people are willing to eat without even realizing it…

  3. It’s sad that this boils down to lobbying. Crap like this and the tax on tanning salons isn’t determined by what is healthy, but rather which lobbying group manages to get exemptions or not.

    Nobody eats at theaters very often. And nobody thinks that movie popcorn is healthy. This probably won’t have any impact except on theaters staying open, which only really survive on concession profits.

    I really wish somebody would gut the non-healthcare parts of the healthcare bill. I have a small business and I think the 1099 provision will cause a lot of problems for small businesses, and ultimately lose the IRS money.

  4. I don’t eat the stuff. I find the overpowering smell nauseating. I take it they pump popcorn aroma through the air conditioning to get such a uniformly strong odour.

  6. Whaaaa?

    Popcorn is one of the lowest calorie foods you can make, even if you use a dusting of sugar instead of salt.

    Is this some American thing, where a ‘regular’ popcorn is a gallon or so and/or comes covered in butter and ‘nacho cheese’*

    I’m assuming the latter, since you’d need need to buy another seat to hold your literally man-sized amount of 1200 cal. popcorn

    *I think nacho cheese was invented when some executive found out cheese came from cows and went “Eeeewwww, yucky! Can’t you make it without using cows? Can’t you just use a flavoured cornstarch syrup instead?”

    1. So far I’ve only seen Canadian movie theatre food, but I can only imagine the American stuff is comparable. It’s … astonishing. Really. “Large” sizes could easily do about 4 or more people, while the “smalls” are closer to what I’m used to considering “large”.

      And never mind the salt content – I think you can get your whole RDA from half a “serving”.

    2. It’s the topping. The grease that most US chains proffer is closer to biodiesel than to butter. Lipids and other fatty acids have a very high calorie density, and the stuff on cinema popcorn has loads of LDL cholesterol.

      I love it so.

  7. “Would you like butter on your popcorn?”

    “No, thanks. I’ll just have that axle grease you normally put on it.”

  10. But remember, as the current issue of _Cooking Light_ magazine points out: popcorn *is* a whole grain.

  11. What’s the point of saying “nobody thinks movie popcorn is healthy”? Yeah, of course not. But I was thinking more like 400 calories and a few grams of fat, not 1200+ calories and 60 grams of saturated fat. It’s the difference between “not healthy” and “this stuff is poison; don’t let it get anywhere near your mouth”.

    More information is better. How can anyone argue with that?

    1. More information is good only when it’s not misleading. It’s hardly poison, and it’s not 1200 calories per serving. When was the last time you ate a large tub of popcorn by yourself? Those things are ridiculously big. If I even eat just 1/2 of it (which I never do), it’s only 600 calories, a reasonable snack size for a guy who isn’t dieting.

      And, btw, the sodium content is irrelevant for a large majority of the population. You really only have to watch out for it if you are hypertensive *and* you are salt sensitive.

      1. What’s so bad about reporting this stuff? It’s not like they’re forcing theaters not to sell it, just to give more information.

        “A 2009 survey based on laboratory tests commissioned by the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington found that a large popcorn serving contained as much as 1,460 calories — which is the equivalent of eating nearly three McDonald’s Big Macs.”

        I figured movie theater popcorn wasn’t good for me but three big macs not good? If I had a whole bag of popcorn at home it’d be a third, a fourth of that? That’s crazy.

        I see a lot of people in theaters eating a whole bucket by themselves, as a prelude to dinner (because popcorn isn’t filling, even covered in plastic-butter-fat). I think this is good to know so you can make your own decisions.

      2. @hw2084: Everything in your comment is wrong. Sodium should content absolutely matter to everyone, lots of people eat the entire tub, and there’s nothing misleading about putting the nutrition facts on the popcorn.

        But I’m with xian, my pet peeve is people-who-laugh-at-jokes-that-aren’t-funny. Also, bed bugs. These days I just wait for things to come out on Netflix.

  12. Well, I don’t eat movie-theater popcorn. Nope.

    But I do make it at home. With less fat/oil that I butter my toast. Half a cup of corn (one serving when unpopped) makes a lot of popcorn, which magically becomes 7 servings. All that air is fattening, eh.

  13. @ hw2084 “When was the last time you ate a large tub of popcorn by yourself?”

    I admit that personally it’s been a while; I don’t get out to the theater as often as I did.

    As for theater owners not wanting to tell anyone what’s in the popcorn… that’s fine. I don’t want to know! Nom nom nom.

  14. @CampFreddie: Popcorn itself might be fine, but not when you have a machine which dispenses liquid fat onto the popcorn. When I worked my first job in a movie theater, I had one customer who would buy two large tubs, making me fill them up a quarter at a time, and spreading butter over each quarter. He’d be back for his free refills before the trailers had even finished. (He was there every day for every matinee and I was terrified we were going to find him dead in his seat in the midst of a coronary.)

    More irking to me about the movie popcorn is the price. We sold a large tub for 7.50. The ginormous bag of popcorn kernals? Something like 15 bucks. The profit margin on popcorn was huge. (1995 was the year I spent toiling as a concessionist.)

    1. To be fair, this isn’t really about profit margin on the kernels. Theaters may be making 1000% margin on the kernels, but they are not a high margin business overall. The popcorn margin is what keeps the lights on, the rent paid, and the underpaid employees from being more severely underpaid.

      And I’m not trying to shill for AMC or Regal – I hate those places, especially because of the horrifying ads they make their audiences watch. Going there feels like going into A Clockwork Orange, where you become a captive to psychological branding warfare. But my local theaters are awesome – and they need to scrap to make money where they can. Most of the ticket price goes back to the studios, so the concessions are what keep the theaters alive.

  15. FYI – that doesn’t mean I don’t support nutritional info on all foodstuffs. People’s right to access information for public health trumps the theater’s need for profit, IMHO.

  16. I absolutely cannot stand the hoards of mouth breathing, lip smacking, mouth cavity echoing, cow cud sucking, I-know-there’s-got-to-be-another-ounce-of-corn-syrupy-goodness-in-this-54-ounce-soda-if-I-suck-hard-enough assholes who insist on inhaling buckets of that shit at the theater. Why do they even sell food that can compete with a 10.2 sound system? Popcorn and nachos, really? Why not add breakfast cereal and and pop rocks to the menu. Oh look, someone ordered the fajitas!

    Needless to say, I don’t so much go to the movies much…

    1. here here
      100% correct.

      i know a revival theater (the premiere revival theater in the los angeles area) that allows food to be brought in. the guys that bring in pizza are not bad except that the air around them smells awesome, but the people who for whatever reason pack their stuff in grocery bags, both plastic and paper, are some of the most unaware people i have ever had the displeasure of hearing 10 rows away. much worse than the legendary biodegradable sun chips bag. next to them, i would welcome pop rocks (not really, but if i had a choice).

  17. The irony here is everybody expressing disgust over the butter or oil the popcorn is fried in, when in reality the corn itself (even if air popped, no oil no butter) is the most fattening part. But trying to tell people that carbohydrates and not dietary fat is what makes you fat is a hopeless endeavor and generally ends with getting shouted down by “hurr durr you’re one of those Atkins weirdos huh durr durr”

    1. +1. I love all the comments about grease and fat, as if a tub of grass seeds is somehow a natural or healthy food for humans.

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