COLLEGE STATION - For romance, candy can be dandy, but if you overdo it, the effort to remove those love handles can be anything but sweet.
Valentine's Day is often a time of sweets for your sweetie, but if you pump in chocolate now, you'll likely have to pump some iron later to lose some unwanted pounds, says a Texas A&M University professor.
"Everyone likes to eat some candy at Valentine's Day, but you'd be surprised how much exercise it takes to burn off just a few pieces of chocolate," explains Dr. Danny Ballard, a professor of health and education at Texas A&M.
"Even small pieces of chocolate, those containing only one ounce or so, contain about 150 calories each. So it's not uncommon for a box of candy to contain 10,000 calories or more, and the laws of exercise have not changed. If you eat more in calories than you burn off, you're going to gain weight," she confirms.
Besides being loaded with calories, there's other bad news about candy. It has practically zero nutritional benefits other "than being just a quick source of energy," Ballard says.
"The main ingredient is sugar and not much else. It has almost no nutrients or vitamins. It gives you a fast energy boost and tastes good, but it doesn't do anything else that is really good for you."
While munching on that bon-bon, consider this: Ballard says if you consume only 100 calories per day more than you burn off, you will gain at least 10 pounds in a year.
That's not good news to a nation that is rapidly losing the battle of the bulge. Recent government studies show that more than 50 percent of all Americans are either overweight or obese. That's a 25 percent increase since 1980.
Eating candy doesn't help the situation much, and Valentine's Day could
have better timing. Most people are still trying to shed pounds put on during Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's celebrations. Throw in all the candy consumed during Halloween and the pounds can add up in a hurry, Ballard says.
"We are at the most sedentary time in our history, and we certainly don't exercise as much as we should," she adds.
"It's harder than ever to get people to exercise. Eating a piece of candy now and then is fine and can be a treat, but if you overdo it, you're going to pay the price."
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Contact: Keith Randall at (409) 845-4644 or Danny Ballard at (409) 845-7649
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