Anatomy of a Candy Corn Oreo...

Halloween candy has been lining store shelves for at least a month now, and if it’s not hard enough to resist buying those gigundo-sized bags of chocolate bars, there’s now another October-31-inspired treat to tempt you: Last week Nabisco released Candy Corn Oreos in Target stores. As you may guess, this version is white vanilla wafers sandwiching yellow and orange cream. When you take a quick glance at the nutrition facts and compare them to regular Oreos things don’t appear that different:

• 160 calories vs. 150 calories
• Both have 7 grams of fat
• 24 grams of carbohydrates vs. 21 grams
• Regular Oreos even have a little less sugar: 14 grams vs. 12 grams

And both ingredients lists contain the usual suspects that you’d expect in a high-sugar, refined-carbohydrate, empty-calorie treat: sugar, enriched flour, high fructose corn syrup, and some fortified vitamins.

But this is a great example of why you need to read the nutrition facts carefully. A little closer look reveals that a serving of Oreos is three cookies while a serving of Candy Corn Oreos is two cookies. So while the food labels look almost identical, there is 28 percent more sugar, 40 percent more calories, and 31 percent more carbohydrates in Candy Corn Oreos than in regular Oreos.

The increase in sugar is evident as soon as you open the package—you’re hit with such an intense wave of sweetness, you’d think you just opened a bag of confectionary sugar. The cookies are so sweet you probably won’t eat more than one, and if you are looking to burn off those calories, here are some things that you can do:

• 9 minutes of Jumping jacks
• 9 minutes of mountain climbers
• 23 minutes of cleaning your house
• 16 minutes of weeding your flower bed

At 75 calories and almost 1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar per cookie, you can probably find better ways to splurge away your discretionary calories, as in the end they don’t even taste like candy corn!

Once again - Thank You Shape Magazine :)

Until Monday - Keep thinking veggies and protein!