are subway sandwiches that healthy?
 

i was looking at bread in the supermarket, and just about every friggin loaf of bread was made with high fructose corn syrup, which is something out bodies don't process well and is believed to be a major reason why americans are fat (obesity rose about the time high fructose corn syrup was put in processed foods cause it's a cheap sweetener).

interesting links are here:

http://www.drmirkin.com/nutrition/3021.html

and here:

http://www.menshealth.com/cda/articl...10cfe793cd____


i know fast food is neither fast, nor is it really food, it's pretty much poison, but i thought about subway, how they have 6grams or less of fat sandwiches. yet lots of people who eat at subway are not losing any weight.

part of the reason is they order a sandwich and load it up with cheese, mayo, and get a cookie or chips and a soda and the meal comes out to 1,000 or so calories, half a day's needed caloric intake in one shot...

but i got to wondering and looked online and, sure enough, subway bread has high fructose corn syrup in it...

which makes sense, most heavily processed foods have it, which is why most processed foods make you fat....

so even eating "healthy" is not that healthy....

Subway is definitely not that healthy. What it IS is healthy compared to the other fast food places. I'm talking about a regular turkey sub also. Without chips and with a 0 calorie drink. The sub I get is about 600 calories with a diet drink. McDonald's combos are like 1,500 calories (some are more). The key to making Subway healthy is not loading the shit on them like you said. Get a turkey sub with lettuce tomatoe and low fat mayo. It's actually good on wheat bread, it fills you up, and it's 1/3 the calories of other fast food.

Interesting discussion about HFCS also.

BAM.

Comparison. What he said.

Don't eat garbage.

High fructose corn syrup is in almost every bread at the grocery store. It's also in a ton of different foods that are consumed daily. I don't know how bad that stuff is for you, but as someone who looks up the nutrition facts of everything I eat, I can say that the damn ingredient is everywhere!

You've pretty much answered your own question. It is not enough to know that something is low in fat before you eat it. You also need to know that it has quality ingredients, i.e. not HFCS.

Dietary health is simple. Learn to cook, introduce wholesome food into your diet, develop a taste for wholesome food so you can leave the middle aisles of the grocery store behind.

It is not just the bread in the US either - the breakfast cereal aisle in the supermarket nearly killed me - there is almost no choice of things which aren't sweetened to the nth degree.

Thankfully in Oz, the bread aisle is full of ...... bread, not confectionary and in the cereal aisle (while the sugar bombs do exist), there is a fairly wide selection of things that are low in sugar and fat.

Subway? not really that much better than any other fast food place, though they do have choices that are certainly lower fat/sugar than Maccas etc. They also have the choices that allow the end user to make it as bad...

We have been doing our best to cut out hfcs for about 5 years now. It's tough...very tough. But we've been fairly successful with it. At least with our regular food. When we splurge on junk, I'm not too concerned about it.

Surprisingly, almost all the healthy cereals have it. So we end up with the kid's cereals in our cabinet because it's fortified and sweetened with sugar instead of hfcs. For ice cream, I often get sherbet or frozen Italian ice instead. Soda is another killer, especially since I'm allergic to most artificial sweeteners. We found that Coke Zero and Fresca are good. The best though are the Whole Foods' 360 sodas. But we haven't found a Whole Foods close to us after the move. But for that carbonation craving, 100% fruit juice mixed with soda water is good too.

Trader Joe's food is hfcs-free as well as Whole Foods. In other place, you have to label read and be prepared to not enjoy some regular items. I miss Raisin Bran Crunch, granola bars, and Special K the most.

As for Subway, it's not as greasy and artificial as other fast food places. But I'm under the impression that if I'm eating fast food, I'm not going for healthy in the first place. We don't eat out much so it's a treat when we do. I splurge off my generally healthy diet for such occasions.

just get the wheat bread, no cheese, no mayo, veggie or turkey, and you can add some of the fat free sauces like honey mustard and still come in at less than 20% of what one f*cking burger at mcdonalds would have just put in you.

as far as the assumption that people who eat at subway dont lose weight, it's simply not true. I mean, no, subway isn't some magical box you enter and all of a sudden you're looking 10 lbs thinner. Theres personal responsibility to watch what you're putting on that damned sandwich. loading it up with cheeses and mayo and chipotle and good lord, it's liquid fat, people....

one "ingredient" doesn't make or break the nutritional value of something if it's still far healthier than anything you'll pull out of taco bell or mcdonalds with.

I lost weight while eating a lot of McDonalds.

In fact I think its a bit easier to keep on a diet when you don't have a lot of time by eating fast food.

The reason is most fast food companies list their calories. It makes it a lot easier to keep in a dietary budget that way.

When I was on a diet I'd do half a BMT at subway I think and it worked out to 660 calories for lunch. Worked fine.

I'm not worried about calories from fat, or corn syrup or whatever. Its just the total. Intake vrs output, its not difficult.

Did it give you explosive diarrhea, too?

I think the biggest problem I have with Subway is their bread. They don't have a true whole grain bread. I get the feeling it is mostly white bread with added goodness. I'd rather have whole goodness.

I've done the same, although it was Wendy's not McDonalds. I think it holds true, though.

The "secret" is what you're doing with the time when you're not eating. If you're exercising regularly and, hopefully, vigorously, the weight can't stay on. It becomes a simple subtraction issue when you're expending more energy than you're taking in.

For those of you looking to avoid HFCS, there's something else to avoid: crystalline fructose.
Note the phrase "fructose-enriched corn syrup" in that definition: it's HFCS. From what I understand, manufacturers are switching to this because (a) people are looking to avoid HFCS, and (b) 'fructose' has associations with fruit, so it sounds better.

1000 calories really isn't that bad, either.

i see your point and mostly agree, except that the "one ingredient" is high fructose corn syrup. it's in the wheat bread as well. doesn't matter how few calories are in the bread, the HFCS is the thing that screws up your body. so people get the wheat bread, thinking it's healthier than white, cause it's wheat and whole grain and all, and it's got the poison in it...300 calories with HFCS is worse than 800 calories without...

You know I never heard of HFCS as somehow worse than any other sugars.

So I did a bit of research and it seems a few small studies did indeed show it was worse, and other studies showed no difference from other sugars.

Data is way to limited to make claims that its more than twice as bad as regular sugars, and many studies that show a link didn't look at HFCS specificly, meaning saying a diet rich in HFCS make you fat without a diet of equal calories with a different sugar to compare it with only means you shouldn't eat a lot of sugar, not that HFCS is the problem.

The other issue is maybe subway bread has HFCS but how much exactly? How much of the bread calories is from it?

I've always personally linked my weight gain with a lot of soda consumption, but I think the fact that a few a day is the same as eating an extra meal is more to blame than any other specific factor.

I can drink a 2 liter of coke in one day because I'm not satisfied with the beverage and still thirsty.

I go to Europe or drink any cane sugar sweetened soda and I can't drink much of it at all. Maybe 2 glasses.

take from that what you will.

Jones soda is a great soda that uses pure cane sugar. I've been trying to eliminate all HFC's from my diet.

I keep meaning to try some of their stuff.

Another good brand that I've seen in a few places is Virgil's. They make a really good root beer and cream soda. They also make a black cherry cream soda that's.. well.. it tastes like fizzy cough syrup.

As far as HFCS goes, I'm always amazed to see how much it pops up in supposedly "healthy" items. Go take a look at the wheat bread ingredients in a supermarket. Almost every one I've ever seen has the junk in it. I've found one type from Pepperidge Farms that uses honey as a sweetener, so I've been sticking with that one.

I was going to mention Trader Joe's but leave out Whole Foods because I hate them. That place is a freaking scam. Most items cost twice as much as they should and the workers are smug assholes.

I love the ingredients lists in the food at TJ's. Simple and short. They show that it is possible to have low prices without loading the food up with a bunch of garbage.

hmm interesting and true

Whenever I drink a soda sweetened with cane sugar, I experience the same thing. In fact, I rarely finish a can. However, when drinking something like Coke or Pepsi, I can down a 20 oz. bottle and still want more.

Interesting observation.

Back to Subway.... I found that when I replaced two lunches a week with a Subway 6 inch turkey on wheat with cucumbers, pickles, carrots, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, yellow mustard, a teeny bit of mayo sometimes, salt and pepper with a thing of baked Lays and a 5 calorie diet lemonade, I did end up losing about 8 pounds in a month. That was about a year ago. It was the only change I'd made in my diet and there was no change in my exercise, so who knows. I fell off the subway kick (dunno why I used to crave it so much) after that month and went to salads for lunch. But it was interesting.

I burn through my subway lunch in a matter of hours...2-4 hours later I'm starving again. But I did find that they were much easier to digest, and didn't 'weigh' me down like the other fastfood places did. That allowed me to workout soon after I eat my subway.

That being said, does anyone else find it misleading for Subway to not include the cheese in their advertised calorie counts?

I agree that Whole Foods is a scam. I went there for the soda only and their bulk section. Oh and ice cream because TJ's doesn't have it. Oh and the cheeses...yummo! I never shop at just one store...each one has it's own good parts.

I don't like TJs because you can't get just small amounts of produce. So, I have to go elsewhere for that. But their convenient, quick frozen foods are cheap and much healthier! :thumbsup:

Does this mean Subway is a scam too? They charge over $8 for a sandwich there.

whole foods is maybe over-priced, but it isnt a scam for all that.
it is organic foods and related products for the yuppie set.
whole foods encountered problems with the organic thing because of their scale: which is interesting if you are interested in organic/sustainably produced produce.
but i only go there for specific things--the prices for some things are quite good, but for others are outrageous. it makes no sense not to strategically use the place.


as for subway: if you are eating there, i dont understand where the concern for healthy food could possibly come from, why its relevant.
it's like wondering where you might get a healthy cheese-steak.
i like cheese steaks--they are a minor vice of mine--but i know that they are bad for me--but i dont care. i dont eat them terribly often, and when i do knowing that it is bad is part of the fun.

i had a friend who worked at a subway who told me a story about never emptying the meat trays--instead, they would put a thin veneer of fresh meat on top of whatever was already in the tray--if the person making the sandwich reached too far into the tray, then you would get bad meat in your sandwich. now i understand that this was something done by a particular group of alienated high school kids who worked one subway in ithaca new york: but the story nonetheless grossed me out so completely that i wont eat there. ever. and i dont even know if the story is true.

That story is definitely true. I worked in a kitchen for 6 years and the other employees did this often. I usually did the salad bar there. When I did it, I made sure that every single item in every bucket on the salad bar were rotated with fresh food twice daily. That way, no bucket can go more than 1 day without being emptied because the older food was pushed to the top.

The other employees...well, let's just say that one summer I didn't do the salad bar for the 4 summer months. At the end of the summer, I did the salad bar and discovered 2 or 3 buckets that hadn't been rotated in...4 months. At the bottom was mold so old that it was solidified into a green brick.

People are lazy and don't give two shits about customer service quality.

I went to my boss and asked for a new rule to be made: dump the entire salad bar in the trash every week no matter what. That way it's impossible to have that happen. From then on the salad bar was fine.

I wouldn't call it a scam, but it is well marketed. Owned by Doctor's Associates Inc. all the things that are printed on their napkins etc. seem to have more weight to it IMO because you see the words Doctor's Associates on there. Yet there is no reason in the history of the company to be called Doctor's Assoc.

I'm definitely going to have to call shenanigans on all this crap.

High fructose corn syrup is exactly what it sounds like; namely, it's fructose, a type of sugar. It will not eat your children, give you toenail cancer or summon the debil. But instead of just saying that, let's look at the science, shall we?

High fructose corn syrup contains a mixture of glucose and fructose; the exact ratio depends on the formula in question and can vary from 45% fructose to 90% fructose. According to my reading, there are several different formulae in use which makes it difficult to put an exact number on it. Glucose and fructose are both monosaccharides with a chemical formula of C6H12O6. Sucrose, on the other hand, (commonly known as cane sugar) is a disaccharide and consists of one glucose and one fructose molecule in a weak bond. Upon exposure to acid, such as that in our stomaches, sucrose rapidly breaks down into glucose and fructose, and is then metabolized. In terms of how it's metabolized, high fructose corn syrup differs from sucrose only in the ratio of glucose to fructose; in soft drinks this ratio is usually 55% glucose to 45% fructose, as opposed to a 50-50 from cane sugar. I have yet to find any conclusive evidence that fructose is any better or worse than glucose, although admittedly I've only been reading since this morning.

All of these sugars are simple carbohydrates. They add sweetness to the foods and have a high caloric content without any further nutritive value. This is what dietitians refer to as 'empty calories,' because they boost your daily caloric intake without adding anything further to your diet. As such, all forms of sugar should be taken in moderation.

So why are Americans getting fat? Well, the thing about high fructose corn syrup is that it's cheap; in the US it would seem that it's actually cheaper to produce than cane sugar. This allows American companies of all flavours to manufacture their goods at a lower price and pass the savings onto the consumer, while still making a profit. So the 'crime' that high fructose corn syrup is committing is lowering the cost of almost all foods.

Nobody should be consuming excess amounts of sugar, no matter what form it takes. If cutting high fructose corn syrup out of your diet is your shortcut for limiting your sugar intake, I say more power to you. By all means, dieting and calorie counting is tough and anything that makes it easier for you is worthwhile. That doesn't mean, however, that high fructose corn syrup is the source of all the world's woes. Yes, the introduction of high fructose corn syrup and the rise in obesity did start at about the same time, but correlation is not causation. One didn't necessarily cause the other.

In Canada we have an obesity problem of our own, with as much as 50% of the population overweight and 20% or more morbidly obese. We're not much better than you guys, in other words; yet, a scouring of every label in my house (which includes Gatorade, Coca Cola and Lay's potato chips, to name a few popular brands) revealed not one mention of high fructose corn syrup. We don't use the stuff here, but we're fat too. Ergo, it would stand to reason that high fructose corn syrup is unlikely to be the sole cause of obesity.

It bothers me a bit that I actually have to point that out, but whatever.

As to Subway, well, yeah. Apparently the American branches use high fructose corn syrup in their bread. I don't see why this is a surprise. All bread contains sugar and a company like Subway produces huge amounts of bread. In order to offer their product at the lowest possible price, it stands to reason that they would use the cheapest form of sugar avilable. In the United States for reasons I can't be bothered to look into, this seems to be high fructose corn syrup. That does not make the food unhealthy and a Subway sandwich is still much better for you health-wise than a burger from McDonald's or Burger King. Exactly how healthy the sandwich is will depend entirely on what you decide to put on it; again, this really shouldn't be a surprise.

Thank god.

I was about to start blaming white bread. Just to demonize it.

No. Cheese is full of fat and is disgusting anyway...

Ahhhh dear Martian....

I wasn't terrified of the effects of consuming the stuff... it's the economy built around corn agriculture that I despair over. By purchasing HFCS, we buy into that chain. Maybe if I get a bit of time I'll prepare an in-depth post on what I've found...

Aha. Well, that's an issue I'm not willing to tackle just now. So long as we can agree that the detrimental health effects of high fructose corn syrup have been greatly exaggerated, I'm a happy man.

The corn subsidy results in a surplus of corn. Not eating corn but corn that can be processed. Corn is a starch and as such, when broken down can be made into all sort of things.

Sugars made from corn are cheaper because of the subsidy on growing. But what has been done is that instead of just replacing cane sugar with hfcs, they are also using it in places it was never used before. For example, bread. It is used in processed breads to get them to go golden brown (sugar carmelizes).

While I have been reading lately about the difficulty our bodies have processing the stuff, it is the doubling up of sugar into recipes that has been alarming. Increasing the calories in a bottle of coke, etc.


As for Subway, just like McDonald's, they are as much of a problem in the mass industrialization of meats and processing. They add to the problems that are being caused in our food chain by massive feed lots and the potentially hazardous farming, processing and general supply of meats in north america.

according to the american journal of clinical nutrition, high fructose corn syrup reduces circulating insulin and leptin and increases triglycerides.

more from this article:

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/79/4/537

You're misquoting the article.

What's stated is that fructose decreases leptin and insulin levels. Fructose is a naturally occurring sugar and is one of the component molecules of sucrose. The article makes a distinction between free and bound fructose that is, so far as I'm able to tell, largely semantic. It further states that fructose consumption has increased by approximately thirty percent since 1970. High fructose corn syrup is mentioned as the main vector of the fructose increase.

The article then goes on to state that the worst offender is soft drinks.

And that high fructose corn syrup in a solid form isn't a big deal :

So, in conclusion, soda is bad for you.

Any questions?

If you have a small subway sandwich for lunch and a large for dinner, skipping the soda and chips, get a reasonable amount of exercise and eat nothing else (except breakfast), you probably could loose weight. I bet that's what that guy in the subway commericals did.

It depends on the sandwich. Weight loss, when it comes down to it, is burning more calories in a day then you take in. I guarantee that I could replace two meals a day with subway and gain weight, or I could replace subway with two meals a day and lose weight. If I order, in each meal, a footlong meatball sub, or a footlong chicken bacon ranch, each slathered with cheese and a high fat/calorie dressing, cookies and a large coke... well, that's probably about 2000 calories a meal. A 6 inch chicken/turkey/ham on wheat, no cheese, with baked chips (or no chips) and diet coke is much different.

The subway marketers are obviously not dumb people. They know that a majority of people are going to go into subway, order a 1500 calorie sub, AND leave feeling good about themselves because "they ate at subway for lunch". In the end, it's all a matter of what you order. Martian is absolutely right in that there is no reason to believe that HFCS and the skyrocketing obesity problem are related.

True. They really pissed me off when they switched to just showing the 6" prices and had a note about how much to add for a 12".