New costa meal deal is irresponsible

[Habanero]

Costa have just launched a lunchtime meal deal with a toastie, crisps and a coffee. The one pictured on the ad with a cheese and ham toastie and a latte contains 754 calories, 34g fat, 15.4g saturated fat and 2.1g salt. You can cut off a bit of the calories and fat by opting for lower-fat milk, but it’s still a third of an adult’s daily calories with no source of fibre and no fruit or veg. This sort of thing normalises overeating: by making this a “meal deal” the company is presenting this as a normal lunch option, psychologically nudging people towards consuming an energy-rich, nutritionally poor midday meal.

Clearly it’s a first world problem and we all have choices and don’t need to buy this, but it’s the normalisation of overeating like this which I think has done more than anything to raise obesity levels. AIBU?

The food police are everywhere.

Never seem to have those under 400 calories when you go though every single time? I’d just bypass it from now on

we all have choices and don’t need to buy this

Exactly ‘we all have a choice’ so butt out. 🙄

*The weight started falling off me when it dawned on me one day that a large cappuccino was >250 calories, and a large Americano

Jesus what is it with these weirdy food/calorie threads?

Do you have some sort of problem with food op?

Since they aren’t forcing you to eat it I think it comes down to personal choice tbh.

I'm a recovering anorexic and it was a superior judgy arse who kept making remarks that started my ED

OP is expressing concern about the “food environment”, and the high calorie offerings from chains, not judging peoples food choices.

In a world where we are having veganism, plant based diets, low calorie, clean eating and all the other gobshite bombarded towards us on a daily basis I think it’s fantastic to see someone saying it’s ok to have a bloody toastie and a coffee! Maybe I’m just poor but I’m sure the average person wouldn’t be eating this on a daily basis. Yes obesity is a problem in our country but what about the rates of eating disorders that continue to rise year on year??

Keep up

Ah yes with Shape magazine, selling exercise and diet stuf. No vested interest there.

If you go to the actual research the authors say:

Findings are not causal, and future research needs to focus on whether improved fitness could have positive effects on dementia risk and when during the life course a high cardiovascular fitness is most important

But that probably doesn't sell as many exercise mats or vitamin pills.

Eating disorders are of course an issue, but for a much, much smaller proportion of the population.

I've bought the toastie/latte/cake meal deal from costa for a homeless chap. I'm pretty sure water/salad/apple type meal deal isnt going to make him feel full so for now I will continue to buy him his toastie. I'm sure he will have a good laugh about you thinking he should enjoy a salad in the pouring rain

Could you not buy him an umbrella and a toastie then so he can laugh in the dry?

@Habanero, I wish most of the world had your privileged worries.
This is a third of a meal intake of a normal person. It's not a double burger with XXXXL fries and a milkshake and cookies, it's a bloody ham and cheese sandwich with a latte.
Seriously, what's next, a worry about the wrong colour of sneakers in a lifestyle sports shop window?

I have a teenage daughter and have always refused to demonise or deify any foods for her. I also refused to ever talk about diets or whether someone was overweight. Down that path lies insecurity and issues. Instead I have always advocated eating a little bit of everything and majoring on being healthy and strong rather than things. My daughter is a healthy weight for her height with a little bit of jiggle on her bum and thighs but she genuinely has zero hang ups about her body and has never 'dieted'. So many of her friends are slimmer than her but are constantly stressing over their figure and denying themselves food they want, then feeling guilty. It's so unhealthy and unhappy.

Itsu is great for low cal options. Loads of options around 300-400 cals and it's all labelled.

750 cals for a meal deal at Costa seems completely unremarkable. The 400-600-600 thing is guidance- it doesn't mean noone can ever eat more than 600 cals And plenty of people need more (my OH, for example, is 6'5" and would starve on 1600 cals a day). I do actually have some sympathy with the view that big chain fast food places need to take a degree of responsibility re not constantly pushing larger sizes (supersizing everything etc) but this is hardly an example of that.

Dh and I often walk into our local branch, looking for a decent coffee and a bite to eat, and walk out again because there are no low calorie options.

Costa give a lot of info on how to reduce calories in their coffee without drinking it it black here: www.costa.co.uk/nutrition/

And detailed nutritional info on their standard range here: www.costa.co.uk/nutrition/Costa-ANI-data-March-2018.pdf

It includes a number of lower calorie options for a lunch meal. They usually have other salads available outside the standard franchise menu.

Its up to you which items you choose. Other vendors have similar ranges - pick the lower calorie options if you are sedentary/dieting.

I showed the OP to my husband because I found the tone of it funny, he responded with "You'd have to be a mug to eat at Costa in the first place, it's so expensive."

*The weight started falling off me when it dawned on me one day that a large cappuccino was >250 calories, and a large Americano

Default for Americano is black. So calories would be

Meant to add - I was assuming the PP talking about latte v americano had switched to black.

I'm sitting here eating a huge Lindt bunny which is probably about a half of my daily recommended calorie intake. I'm perfectly aware of this and know quite a lot about the calorific value of food and what constitutes a healthy diet. Yet I choose to eat this. Like everyone else can choose to eat a Costa lunch or not. It winds me up when people moan about the responsibilities of restaurants. There are a myriad of healthy options available to everyone. It's your own responsibility to educate yourself and choose your own food.

They're a profit driven company, not your mummy or doctor

Exactly, lots of cafes end up with loads of "healthy" food being thrown out at the end of the day and losing money. We can't blame them for stocking the items people want to buy.

'The food police are everywhere.'

Exactly, but funny, they're never around when it comes to many of the true causes of obesity: selling off parks, poor quality housing and lack of security in rented housing and sky-high private rents (necessitating parents to work longer and longer hours), decrease and cuts in funding for council-funded programmes for sports clubs and swimming and physical education in schools, decrease in funding for respite care and support for children with special needs that can lead to move activity in such children and their siblings, increasing privatisation of the NHS and funding cuts leading to recruitment problems.