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You’ll face the same supersize dilemma when you buy snacks outside the home. When you’re at the movies, you might see the following choices for popcorn.

Small $3.13
Medium $3.84
Large $4.44

Certainly the large popcorn is a better deal, and sometimes if you buy the large popcorn, you can get free refills too. Is it really a good bargain? It depends on what you’re counting. Let’s look at Table 7.1 to see all you get for your money.

For an extra $1.31 (an increase in cost of less than 30 percent), you get an extra 760 calories (an increase of 190 percent) and 50 grams of fat—and that’s before adding the butter. As you can see, you’ll need all of the facts before you can truly decide if the price and portion are worth the extra calories, fat, and potentiallyextra weight.

How about those tasty french fries at McDonald’s? Table 7.2 illustrates the nutrition information for each of their serving sizes. That sixty-four cents extra (an increase of about 65 percent) buys you an extra 330 calories (an increase of more than 100 percent). Making this choice on a daily basis could contribute to a weight gain of about three-quarters of a pound per week—that’s thirtyfour pounds in a year.

What if you choose a value meal? Does this really mean “good value” for your money? It all depends on how you define “good value” and “a good bargain.” See Table 7.3. So despite the “better value” in terms of cost per portion (and cost per calorie—forty-four cents per calorie for the Quarter

Tables 7.1 to 7.5 adapted from National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity (NANA), “Prices,
Calories and Fat Intake for Portions of Food,” in From Wallet to Waistline: The Hidden Costs of
Supersizing, Washington, D.C.: June 2002.

Pounder vs. thirty-one cents per calorie for the large value meal), if you buy a large value meal instead of the Quarter Pounder, you are also getting an extra 850 calories and 26 grams of extra fat. If you eat 850 extra calories per day beyond what you need once or twice per week, this translates to a weight gain of twelve to twenty-five pounds in one year.