A Pox Upon the Popcorn Palace

Popcorn, in and of itself is a pretty good snack. Movie theatre popcorn is not.

A cup of plain, air-popped popcorn weighs in at about 30 calories and negligible amounts of fat. A cup of oil-popped popcorn with butter or buttery-topping has about 80 calories -- most of it from artery-clogging bad fats. And of course, there's about 20 cups in one of those tubs.

One of my biggest slides over the past year was my return to eating movie popcorn. Until recently, I worked nights so seeing a movie in the theatre was a rare occurence. In the past year, I went to at least 20 films in the theatre, and I think we bought big tubs of popcorn almost every time.

I shudder to think how many times popcorn stood in for dinner, how many calories -- especially from fat -- that went into my diet, and how much cash went out of our budget (a combo of the large popcorn, a large drink and a candy bar is $11.99 at the theatre chain we frequent most often).

To combat this, I plan to use a combo of pre-planning (eat before the movie!), willpower (have a coffee instead of popcorn!), and avoidance (watch movies at home!). Cinemas, be forewarned: your profits are about to take a hit from this viewer.

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Read more about the fat content from Kansas State University and at Weightloss.about.com; more about the economics of movie popcorn at Slate: The Popcorn Palace Economy - The thirsty moviegoer fuels the business. By Edward Jay Epstein