Is There Such a Thing as Healthy Popcorn?
With so many people looking to improve their overall health and increase the amount of healthy food they consume, many people wonder if there is such a thing as healthy popcorn. Most people like popcorn. It is easy to make and its warm and salty taste goes great as a snack and for watching movies. Popcorn is all natural as well, leading many people to feel that is a healthier snack choice than chocolate or sugar treats. So, is there such a thing as healthy popcorn?
Carbohydrates in Popcorn
Corn is a naturally healthy product. The kernels of the corn plant are tiny seeds designed to give a new corn plant everything that it needs to grow, including energy, water and starch. It is this water located inside of the kernel, about 14 % of the kernel itself, which causes the kernel to pop into popcorn. Popcorn contains a good deal of carbohydrates. These carbs are a great source of energy but they can quickly turn to fat if they are not used up quickly. Different popcorn brands have different amounts of carbohydrates, but most brands are relatively high. This means that popcorn by itself, without any added flavorings, contains a very large amount of carbohydrates. For a snack, popcorn contains too many carbohydrates to be considered healthy, based on the fact that you would have to work off a lot of this energy to avoid having the carbs in popcorn turning into fat reserves.
While it is high in carbohydrates, popcorn is relatively low in nutritional value. It has a low amount of carbohydrates in the form of fiber, and contains few vitamins. This means that when a person eats an entire bag of popcorn, they are filling themselves up with a lot of simple carbs and receiving little nutritional content from the snack in the process. In order to be a filling snack, popcorn bags come in larger portions, and in places such as movie theaters, the portion sizes are huge. This means that you can be ingesting over 100 grams of simple carbohydrates with little to no nutritional value. And because popcorn is considered to be snack and not a meal, this carbohydrate count is added to the dinner or meal eaten before the popcorn is even brought into the mix. That’s a lot of carbohydrates to ask your body to work off. We have not even got to the flavoring of popcorn yet.
Fatty Flavorings
One of the features that makes popcorn so delicious is the flavoring. Butter and salt and other flavorings give popcorn that irresistible taste that makes you want to go for more. Many of us can easily finish off a bag of popcorn. The problem is that these flavorings are filled with saturated fats and sodium, added to the large amount of carbohydrates of the popcorn itself. The oil used to pop this type of popcorn also adds to the fat content. This makes store bought or movie popcorn very unhealthy.
Homemade Healthy Popcorn
So, is there such a thing as healthy popcorn? Yes, there is. Homemade popcorn can be healthy if you design it to be. Instead of popping the corn kernels in oil, using a hot air popper can remove the extra added fat from the oil. The next step is adding flavoring that will not overdo it on the fat scale. This means vegetable spread instead of butter, low amounts of salt and natural sugars such as honey instead of caramel or white sugar. The final step to producing homemade healthy popcorn is limiting the serving size. To keep your snack healthy, you should eat a smaller portion than you would find at the movie theater. This will reduce the amounts of simple carbohydrates you will consume and store as fat.