Dinner – well Thursdays are a long day for me. Working 7am-4pm, then I have almost 4 hours of down time until a meeting for the upcoming radio show I’m going to be a part of (I’ll talk more about this in the coming weeks). My meeting is on the wrong side of town, so it’s not worth going home in between work and it. It was supposed to be storming – it was raining this morning. Otherwise I might have brought my bike with me and gone for a ride. I suppose I could have hit the gym, but I’m also still recovering from a pulled quad… so I think it’s gonna be this weekend or so before I really get back in to gear as far as exercise goes.
So instead, I’m camped out at Panera Bread. The free wi-fi is letting me get some work done… finish this blog posting… and get something fairly decent for dinner.
While it’s not mandated across the nation yet (I think just in CA so far), Panera is posting calorie counts on their menus already. And actually, some of the numbers did surprise me. (They also have a very comprehensive nutrition calculator online.) One of my favorites there is actually much lower in calories than I would have initially thought. It’s the Pick Two with their tuna salad sandwich and a Greek salad.
A whole Tuna Salad Sandwich is about 470 calories, with most of that (300) coming from the honey wheat bread. So a half is just over 200 calories. The bummer is, it’s loaded with sodium. If you sub in the white, whole-grain bread instead, it cuts 120 calories from the whole sandwich.
The Greek Salad dressing, unfortunately is about their worst dressing calorie/fat wise, accounting for 220 of the 380 in the salad, with another 80 coming from the feta cheese. But a half salad is under 200 calories… so I’m getting a decent meal at around 400 calories. Assuming, of course, that you opt for the apple vs the baguette. Which ok, I don’t always do.
And ya know what? After typing all that up… I go up to the counter to order and while waiting in line I decide to go with something entirely different. I still did the pick-2, but went with the French onion soup and a turkey sandwich. Yea.. I know. But, calorie wise it’s about the same… within 20-30 calories. What’s that saying about the best laid plans and all?
I decided I’m not terribly hungry, and someone sitting near me had the soup and it was smelling really good. So that’s what I went with. And while I did do the baguette… I went for the whole wheat. It went really well with the soup.
Panera can have some pretty good choices for an overall healthy meal… but you gotta be careful. And you especially have to avoid the cookies, pastries and stuff like that. And while yes, I have been tempted by an cookie or muffin top here and there (love the pumpkin ones), I think my biggest issue with Panera’s food is all the sodium. With the baguette, this meal accounts for about a third of the calories I typically eat in a day, but it also accounts for nearly three-fourths of the sodium I should be having. So while having the calories posted on menus can be useful for steering someone towards “better” choices… calories alone do not give you enough information to make a really “good” decision. But that’s getting in to a topic for a whole ‘nother day.
Now I’m thinking I’m a bit light on the protein today – so if after my meeting tonight I’m in need of a snack, I’ll probably do a shake of some sort… we’ll see how it goes.
Anyways, that’s pretty much in for today… be sure to check out the sites of the others that took part in this little food-fest today.
- Pam – Journey to a Healthier Me
- Beth – Melting Mama
- Andrea – WLS Vitagarten
- Tom – Beariatric
- Shelly – The World According to Eggface
- Nik – Bariatric Foodie
- Patrina – Stripped Bare
