I don’t generally watch a lot of TV (too many other things clamoring for my time) but yesterday I was feeling like I was coming down with a cold, so I plopped myself down in my favorite chair.  Turned on the TV.  Prepared to watch a little and snooze a little.

But what I saw made me mad and kept me from snoozing.

Every single commercial break had at least one food ad.  Pizza, MacDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Arby’s…you get the drift.  And not only were they pushing food, they were pushing large portions.  I’ll pick on the  commercial I saw most often — Wendy’s "Baconator" sandwich.

For the "Baconator"  I just looked up the nutritional breakdown for it on the Wendy’s site.  At 840 calories, it has 51 grams of fat, of which 23 grams is saturated fat and 2.5 is trans fat.  Yikes!  Add a medium fries and you have another 430 calories, 20 grams of fat or which 3 grams are saturated.

One meal and you’ve pretty much used up all your calories for a whole day.  Not to mention have had a lot of fat. 

And get ready to swell up, because the sandwich has 1,880 grams of sodium, while the fries have another 370.  And let’s be honest — who doesn’t add salt to their fries?  Just the sandwich alone has more than the recommended daily amount.

Dieting is hard enough.  Do we have to have food pushed in our faces every 7 minutes?

And I’m not letting the other advertisers off the hook — all of them pushed large servings.  Is it any wonder we’re getting fatter as a nation?

So snacking while watching TV isn’t the only pitfall.  Watching the commercials is just as bad, if not worse.

If you’re lucky enough to have TIVO or something along that lines that cuts out the commercials, good for you.  Or watch DVDs or tapes.  Read a book (or a blog).  ;)   Exercise.  But don’t fall prey to the food commercials!

P.S.  Here’s the Wendy’s nutritional breakdown menu information.  Notice how they start out with the "healthy" food first?