Popcorn peril - the horror of cinema snacking (From Watford Observer)

Popcorn peril - the horror of cinema snacking

11:00am Monday 1st March 2010

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Last Monday we took advantage of having a rare ‘work’ day off together by sneaking to the cinema in the middle of the afternoon.

The screaming kiddiewinks were safely back in their classrooms as half-term was over and the foyer of Watford’s Vue cinema was eerily deserted.

Apart from us, there was only one other group of film fans queuing for tickets - a mum and her three teenage offspring.

Serving this quartet took about ten minutes, however. Considering the amount of food ordered for the teenage trio, I can only think they must have been going through some mid-afternoon growth spurt.

It was like watching a nesting sparrow harassed by a brood of three cuckoo chicks.

After demanding that her mother should buy her a tray of nachos “with extra cheese”, the (rather portly) older girl in front of us decided that she also needed a large carton of popcorn and a cola to sustain her through the next two hours.

This request was immediately taken up by her slightly younger, but equally porcine sister, who had already helped herself to a bulging bag of alarmingly coloured sweets from the pick n’ mix selection racks.

Their brother meanwhile, confined his gourmet aspirations to a simple hot dog.

Once brimming popcorn buckets larger than most people’s recycling bins had been presented to the decidedly undynamic duo, they proceeded to chuck nuggets of popcorn into the air, dodging around the foyer while trying to catch them in their mouths.

At least it was some exercise, I suppose, although the dim-witted pair seemed completely oblivious to the fact that they were littering the floor around them with sticky gobbets of gunge.

“Jez, look. Watch this,” called out the older one as she failed, yet again, to retrieve a popcorn ball in her capacious mouth.

My heart warmed to Jez when he answered: “Keep going, sis, you might choke next time.”

Eventually, all the food and drink items ordered by the family were processed by the chap at the counter, along with their cinema tickets. I couldn’t help wincing as I watched the mum handing over a small fortune - not in payment for the film, you understand, but for the vast amounts of cardboardy rubbish about to be consumed by her offspring (largely the girls).

I was reminded of this scene at the weekend when I read a horrifying report about the calories packed away in the popcorn, nachos, ice cream and fizzy drinks sold to filmgoers.

The fact that these items are especially targeted at young customers is particularly chilling, but I imagine that anyone watching their waistline along with a movie would be horrified to learn that at 1,800 calories one large bucket of sweet popcorn is equivalent to a post-cinema curry comprising:

* two dip-laden poppadums

* a chicken korma

* an onion bahji

* a naan bread

* A serving of Bombay potatoes

* a vegetable samosa

…and two bottles of Cobra beer!

Astonishing, isn’t it? And those of you congratulating yourself on the fact that you only ever take the ‘healthy option’ of the salted popcorn will be interested to learn that at a mere 1,779 per large portion, you are actually, according to a nutritionist deployed by The Times, packing away the calorific equivalent of a three-course Italian meal, including a pizza, garlic bread, a serving of tiramisu and half a bottle of red wine.

The information certainly explodes the myth that popcorn is virtually calorie-free. In the past, when I’ve gone to the cinema with female friends we’ve treated ourselves to giant tubs of the stuff, secure in the knowledge that it won’t have any adverse effects on our figures.

As we’ve sat there watching the film version of Sex & the City, say, or some fluffy rom com featuring impossibly glossy Hollywood actresses, we’ve all compared their whippet-like frames with our own more generously padded versions and wondered, while stuffing another handful of popcorn into our mouths, how they manage to stay so trim.

The answer, my friends, is that actresses never actually eat the stuff on sale in cinema foyers - they just help to sell it.

Let’s face it, most screen goddesses exist on a daily handful of macrobiotic nuts and goji berries, but somehow I can’t see a cupful of pumpkin seeds appealing to the hefty young girls who were queuing up in front of us last week.

By the looks of them, after scoffing their way through the main feature, they probably badgered their mum for a Chinese takeaway on the way home, too.

As a snapshot of life in 2010, a visit to the cinema tells you all you need to know about the underlying reasons for the fact that a whopping two thirds of adults and a third of children are currently classified as obese or overweight.

And it’s not just in the cinema, everywhere you look - on a train, on a bus, on the street, in the office - people are chewing, mindlessly filling in the gaps and longeurs of their day by stuffing something pointless and virtually nutrition-free into their mouths.

Although the cinema was almost deserted on a rainy Monday afternoon, it’s significant that half the customers queuing to see a film also stocked up on fat-packed ‘snacks’ to take into the auditorium. Fortunately for us, the ravenous family in front of us in the queue opted to see a different film, otherwise I’m sure that the slurping, crunching and rustling emanating from their row as they tackled their nachos, giant cartons of popcorn, hotdog and buckets of cola would have put The Wolfman right off his supper.

****

By the way, when we bought our tickets we were offered the option of paying an extra £1.50 for ‘VIP’ seats. We didn’t take this up, but, as we were the only people in the auditorium, we carried out a sneaky bottom-test of what this extra money would have bought us.

Hmmm… VIP seats are a tad larger (good for all those obese people packing away the popcorn and nachos, I imagine?) and covered in squishy leatherette. But that’s about it, as far as we could see. Unless Vue can promise me that I won’t be sitting next to someone noisily ploughing their way through a curry’s worth of calories, I definitely won’t be forking out for a VIP seat at Woodside.