Truth be known, one of my largest dietary weaknesses is soft, fresh pretzels. I am not talking about those greasy things sold in the mall or airports or the ones that you can keep in your freezer and pop into the oven for 7 minutes. I am referring to those fresh soft pretzels sold in the streets of Philadelphia and New York. No offense to my New York roots, but the Philadelphia pretzels are the very best.
The supermarkets have an aisle devoted to the sales of chips and pretzels, and the pretzels are the hard variety ranging from thin sticks to the large “Bavarian” pretzels.
Pretzels are composed of refined flour, sugar, oil and salt. “Hard” pretzels are dried. Concerning the nutritional content of a hard pretzel, here goes:
- Calories: 108
- Protein: 2.8 g
- Total fat: 0.8 g
- Saturated fat: 0.1 g
- Carbohydrate: 22.5 g
- Fiber: 1 g
- Sugars: 0.6 g
- Sodium: 347 mg
- Cholesterol: 0 mg
Soft pretzels, especially the huge ones you can buy at stadiums and arenas, contain far more calories, carbs and salts.
So, as you can see, pretzels, although not containing cholesterol, are not exactly the best “snack” to use when you are on a weight control journey. Whole grain varieties and lower salt versions will make those types of pretzels least harmful to your efforts to control weight.
The bottom line: Bypass the chip and pretzel aisle at the supermarket and do NOT do what Posner does when visiting Philadelphia, and that is stopping at a Philadelphia Pretzel Factory and loading up with a bunch of soft pretzels.