Santander wrote:I highly prefer Jimmy John's and Potbelly to Subway, when there is road necessity for a mass-produced sub.

I agree, Jimmy John's is the king of fast food subs. I don't know why though, I've never liked Potbelly subs...this makes me the odd man out at the office, where everyone absolutely loves Potbelly.

The only problem I have with Jimmy John's is that it's over $10 for a sub (particular the #16 Club Lulu with avocado added) and a soda. Then again, I guess most lunch options are over $10 these days, and it's likely I'm being a grumpy "in my day a movie cost a nickel!" old man

As it stands now, after discovering that my weekly Subway sub contains 2/3 of my daily calorie/fat intake goal, I think I'll be having Lean Cuisines for a while as penance.

According to this Slash Food article, Subway's "healthy" 9-grain bread is full of high-fructose corn syrup.

Santander wrote:Mike G., you can't possibly be serious about choosing Subway over Auntie Anne's in a last-resort situation. I could eat those salty things every day, particularly the pretzel sticks with a little cup of Cinnabon frosting. Pretzel dough slathered in butter - what's not to like? [requisite fake flame]: Damn you, sir. You wouldn't know a pretzel from a knot of toe lint.

You speak the truth - I like the pretzel sticks, which are essentially just little sticks of buttered toast. What is not to love there?

I'm by no means a picky eater, but being forced to choose between all the standard fast food places, such as on our road trips to Memphis, is a special kind of hell for me. I don't tolerate fried breaded things well, so no KFC or Popeye's. I prefer to save my allowance of burger calories for a quality product, so no Burger King, Wendy's, or McDonald's. I absolutely loathe cold cuts that are not sparkling fresh, so no Subway. And since we are stone cold sober on these trips, no Taco Bell, either. It's a sad, sad situation when I get excited about seeing a Quizno's, the only place I can get a reasonably tasty and substantive cold-cut-free sandwich.

I'd go to Popeye's and eat the red beans and rice. Probably the single best industrial-food side in the known universe.
Probably an awfully good nutritional spread, too. (Well, maybe. Certainly some fat, but some fiber & protein as well.)

Geo

aschie30 wrote:According to this Slash Food article, Subway's "healthy" 9-grain bread is full of high-fructose corn syrup.

Interesting. It is generally a good bet that "healthy fast food," like Subway and Panera, are generally not that healthy. I will quibble, just for the sake of quibbling, with a few things in this article:

The "healthy" 9-grain bread is a nutritional wasteland packed with high-fructose corn syrup.

Packed?

Here is the ingredient list of the bread:

9-GRAIN WHEAT Enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, barley malt, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, yeast, high fructose corn syrup, whole wheat flour, wheat gluten, contains 2% or less of the following: oat fiber, soybean oil, salt, wheat bran, rolled wheat, rye nuggets, dough conditioners (DATEM, sodium stearoyl lactylate), yeast nutrients (calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate), degermed yellow corn meal, rolled oats, rye flakes, caramel color, triticale flakes, parboiled brown rice, refinery syrup, honey, barley flakes, flaxseed, millet, sorghum flour, azodiacarbonamide, natural flavor (maltodextrin, natural flavor, silicon dioxide, lactic acid).

The bread has more yeast than HFCS! Why does he say it is packed with HFCS, when it is really packed with yeast! Yeast is usually about 1 percent of bread dough. Here it appears to be more than 2 percent, but it can't be much more than that.

The main take-away from the ingredient list should be that nearly all of the flour is enriched wheat flour. There is very little whole grain flour. The fact that it has HFCS is really minor point because there isn't that much.

While the bread does technically have nine grains, he says that you might as well choose white.

You can get the nutritional information from Subway's website.

The white and Nine Grain have approximately equal calories (The white bread has 200 cal per serving while the Nine Grain has 210), fat (2g), sodium (390mg and 410mg). The white bread has 5g of sugars and the whole wheat has 3g. The whole wheat has 4g of fiber and the white bread has 1g. It would be more accurate to say the wheat isn't as healthy as you might think, but if you are eating at Subway and want to reduce sugar and increase fiber, wheat is still a better choice than white bread.

So what's a sandwich lover to do? Zinczenko says there isn't a better bread choice at the chain, so consumers should consider an alternative that's worked for generations: Make your sandwiches at home.

I agree with this. There are plenty of reasons not to eat at Subway, but the nutritional content of the bread is not one of them. Grocery store bread isn't that different. Here's the nutritional info for two slices (80g) of La Brea's multigrain sandwich bread (a premium grocery store brand):

Calories: 200 cal
Fat: 2g
Sodium: 360mg
Sugars: less than 2g (i.e. 2 times "less than 1g")
Fiber: 4g.

On the whole, it is roughly similar to Subway's bread and has slightly less sodium and sugar. But the difference isn't that stark and, at the end of the day, calories are the most important thing and those are nearly identical. I imagine most other mass-market breads would be similar, or worse.

The thing is: if you want healthy bread, eat whole grain bread (whether it is whole wheat, nine grain, or fifty two grain) because it has fiber. If you want good tasting bread, make it yourself. It isn't that hard. The biggest differences between processed bread and homemade bread are taste and sodium.

Flash! Panera in upstate NY (don't know about anywhere else) is offering lobster rolls! They're sandwiches on good bread, with an *incredible* amount of very chunky lobster meat, including whole claws, very lightly sauced. (Supposedly there's half a pound of meat on each sammich.) TODG and her mom are experts on lobster rolls (my MIL has spent 30 Summers in Maine) and they say that the $17 for the sammich is as well spent as on any lobster roll/sammich they've EVER seen.

Geo