Big gulp

Vegetarian Times, Nov, 2002

Next time the server behind the counter of your favorite fast-food joint or convenience store asks if you want to "super-size" your order, don't do it. Better yet, stay out of such places altogether. Retailers are making a killing these days by pushing larger-sized soft drinks, snack foods and deep-fried artery-cloggers, which cost pennies more but foist hundreds of additional calories down consumers' unsuspecting throats.

Trading up from a small- to a medium-sized buttered popcorn at the movie theater, for example, costs the consumer 71 cents more but adds 500 calories. That's two days' worth of saturated fat. A 64-ounce 7-Eleven Big Gulp costs only 37 cents more than the 16-ouncer but contains an additional 450 calories. In the 1950s, an entire meal at McDonald's contained only about 590 calories, the Food Policy Institute reports. Today the same meal can contain 1,000 calories or more. Desserts, of course, are extra. A larger candy bar costs 33 cents more at 7-Eleven but adds 220-230 calories--which is nothing to Snicker at.