Weighty matters and sugar glaze

You're actually salivating, aren't you? Jesus.

A while back, I mentioned that I'd fought my way back down to 200 pounds, this after a period of stealthy personal inflation. This made my doctor very happy. Not much has changed since then. Actually, nothing has changed so far as the scale is concerned. I've been stuck on two-double-nought for a solid month, even after bumping up the old caloric intake a good five or six hundred calories per day. Not the worst problem to have - eating more without putting on weight - but sooner or later I'm going to have to move off this setpoint if I'm to prove worthy of my recently-acquired Piggly Wiggly t-shirt.

All of that comes to mind just now because one of my coworkers brought in a couple of boxes of Krispy Kremes today. Original glazed and some kind of chocolate-covered affair. They will not be long for this world; the chocolate box alone is already down to two doughnuts. I will not be partaking; faithful readers of my own blog (very faithful) already know of my views on Krispy Kreme. There are better options, people, but comparisons aside, I don't have much room for doughnuts these days. Really, I'd need two days advance notice in order to schedule one. "Let's see, Tuesday's really bad for me, how about Friday, say, maybe two-ish?"

It's the kind of talk you expect of the born-again, I know - ex-smokers, former drinkers, the converted and saved and washed clean of sins, the annoying newly pious - and I do apologize for that. It's not that there shouldn't be a place at the table (a small place) for foods whose sole virtue is that fat makes them tasty. It's just kind of strange and novel to be on this side of things, where the very first thought that comes to mind upon seeing the familiar green and white Krispy Kreme box is "Criminy - what the hell is in those things?"

So, uh, here's the answer:

The good news: the most popular doughnut at Krispy Kreme, the Original Glazed, isn't as bad as most of the chain's other doughnuts. The bad news: they're so light and airy that stopping after only one ain't easy.

It's not the 200 calories that'll get you (though 200 times two, three, or four sure might). It's the six grams of saturated-plus-trans fat. That's nearly a third of a day's worth of bad fat in every ring. It's like eating a slice of white bread smeared with a tablespoon of lard (plus a tablespoon of jelly).

A Sugar Coated or Glazed Cinnamon--or Glazed or Cinnamon Twist--will do about the same damage. Even the Chocolate Iced looks the same to your arteries. (The chocolate icing is mostly sugar, so it adds about 50 calories, but no more fat.)

What pumps up the calories, fat, and sugar in Krispy Kreme's filled doughnuts? They're heavier. Krispy offers more than a dozen varieties that do away with the doughnut's healthiest feature: its calorie-free, fat-free hole.

Filled yeast doughnuts--including New York Cheesecake, Chocolate Malted Kreme, Caramel Kreme Crunch, Key Lime Pie, and Chocolate Iced Creme Filled--pack 300 to 390 calories and eight to ten grams of harmful fat. Some weigh nearly twice as much as an Original Glazed. Eating one is like having a nine-ounce filet mignon to tide you over until lunch.

Mm-mmm! That's good eatin', eh?

Okay, I'll stop now.

(Left hook, right cross-post...)