I really enjoyed reading the book Eat This, Not That because it’s such a handy, visual guide to the good, the bad and the ugly of food choices at fast food chains, in the supermarket and at smaller restaurants and delis.

Now the author, Men’s Health editor David Zinczenko, has come out with a version for pint-sized eaters: Eat This, Not That for Kids. He talked about the book and played a healthy eating guessing game on Rachael Ray’s show on Thursday.

Going from bad to worse

Zinczenko said he knows firsthand the necessity of making a change in the way kids eat, since he was overweight as a child.

“I was a fat kid,” he said. “I was ordering all my meals through a clown’s head.”

But he says “today’s kids have it even tougher,” with four times more of them being overweight now than were when he was a kid. He says most kids eat about 150 calories more each day than they used to, which could lead to gaining a pound about every 23 days.

“If you want to feed the future, it you want healthy eaters for life, this is the way to start,” he said of his book, which he describes as putting “decisions at your fingertips” and offering a visual guide that kids can understand and engage with.

Bad choices, better choices

It turns out Rachael Ray is pretty good at identifying the healthier choices offered by different fast food restaurants, given that she aced a quiz set up by Zinczenko. She knew, for instance, that a ham and cheese breakfast sandwich from Burger King (at 290 calories and 13 grams of fat) was a better call than the French toast sticks (680 calories, 24 grams of fat).

They also noted that a thin crust pizza from Domino’s would be a better choice than hand-tossed, netting 260 calories versus 420 in two slices. Zinczenko said personal pizzas are a really bad choice, as they can be as high as 800 calories and 80 grams of fat, since the crusts are usually fried in oil.

At Chili’s, a corn dog and mashed potatoes were a better choice than chicken strips and fries, mostly because they follow the rule of never having more than one fried thing on your plate at a time. The corn dog meal had 440 calories and 28 grams of fat, while the fried bonanza carried a whopping 1,110 calories and 84 grams of fat.

Zinczenko noted that the amount of sodium in the latter meal was the same as 11 mini bags of chips, and the saturated fat level would be the same as eating 15 slices of bacon.

Smarter choices at the deli

The show also covered some tricks for buying food at the deli, noting that it’s important to steer clear of vinegar and oil, which can add 100 calories to every three inches of sandwich. Mustard is a much better choice.

Zinczenko said you should also avoid wraps, because the wrap itself can have as many as 400 calories, and there’s usually a higher volume of ingredients than would be found on a sandwich. Another big no-no is the tuna salad, which he called “the fried chicken of the sea,” noting it has around 300 calories a scoop and can be as much mayonnaise as it is tuna.

(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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