No matter which route Reginald Burns takes when he drives to work each morning in Houston, he knows every doughnut shop along the way. Almost every day, he stops for a fix: a Diet Coke and six doughnuts -- any kind as long as they have just emerged from the fryer.Six donuts? Six donuts A DAY?!! How about buying a few less? I like donuts, but one A WEEK is my limit.
Doughnuts have long been an American breakfast staple. At the same time, their lack of quality nutritional content makes most nutritionists cringe. This contradiction makes them a perfect talking point in the debate over how strict dietary recommendations should be....So are they going to make them illegal because some people can't control themselves?
The recently released 2005 U.S.D.A. dietary recommendations give a green light to "discretionary calories" from foods that may be high in fat, sugar or alcohol. For example, a person eating 2,000 calories per day is allowed 267 discretionary calories -- or about the amount in one glazed doughnut.
Of course, this junk food allotment is only risk-free if a person is not trying to lose weight and has met all nutrient requirements, eating nine servings of fruits and vegetables each day, according to the guidelines. It also assumes that people are able to eat in moderation.
In fact, few people can stop at one doughnut, and consuming six is likely to lead to overeating and to displace nutritious foods...
"Foods containing both sugar and fat are the most palatable and have an appealing mouth feel," said Dr. Kathleen Keller, an appetite researcher at the Obesity Research Center, adding that companies "conduct extensive research to determine the exact sugar/fat proportions that are the most enticing."
Such feel-good foods are not only hard to resist, they may actually be addictive in people with a stronger than normal genetic propensity to like foods that are especially high in fat and sugar. Brain scans using functional magnetic resonance imaging show that lean and obese people react differently not just to eating tasty foods, but even to looking at them.
My favorite chain donuts are Dunkin Donuts, but those are not available where I live. Nor are Krispy Kreme, which I think are awful: they're far too sweet. Meanwhile I'm in Kaohsiung right now, and at the Carrefour supermarket we got a donut that didn't have enough fat. I suspect it was baked, not fried. A few years ago, the Isetan dept. store had some delicious donut-like cakes but they stopped making them. I suspect the Taiwanese market doesn't like that much fat.
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