Coming out of the winter months, my attention goes to my waistline, which while not exactly exploding, has released some of the territory gained from last summer’s busy volleyball, hiking, and biking regime.
So it was with some guilt I glanced at my asiago cheese bagel with (light!) cream cheese this morning, and wondered “Huh. Bagels to me are healthy. Is -this- healthy? I don’t know!”
So off to Panera’s website, and a look at… bagels!
Plain bagel 290cal, 12g protein Asiago bagel 350cal, 16g protein French Toast bagel 380cal, 11g protein
Now lets add on some cream cheese
Regular cream cheese 200cal, 4g protein Reduced fat plain 140cal, 5g protein
So, I’m not particularly getting hammered by choosing Asiago over Plain, but in general, bagels have a lot of calories in them. What did surprise me was how much protein they have. We’re always being careful about how much protein Zach eats, so I was thinking a french toast bagel + cream cheese ‘wasn’t enough’ But consider – a hard boiled egg is 17g of protein – and a tablespoon of peanut butter (the old standby protein-dose), is about 6g of protein. Normally we sort of do a big scoop, so lets call it two tablespoons of PB, so 12g. </p
So a big scoop of peanut butter has quite a bit less protein than your basic bagel + cream cheese.! Velly intellestink.
I do not consider bagels particularly healthy. They’re not exactly unhealthy but a typical bagel is the equivalent of 3-4 pieces of bread, most use all white flour, and many bagels are eaten with a great deal of cream cheese. (Standard serving of cream cheese is 1T, which barely covers a half a bagel.) For all these reasons, when I buy a bagel I consider myself to have bought two breakfasts.
PB has rather less protein than most imagine, mostly because it has rather more fat han most imagine.
If you really want to compare PB vs. bagel & cream cheese, do it on a like-to-like basis: how much protein per 100 calories?
Whereas they aren’t incredibly healthy, bagels are certainly better for you than the bear claws and pecan braid pastries that my sweet tooth prefers.
I find myself at Panera 5 days a week, to work on my laptop remotely, as I think you do. The asiago bagel is yummy. And there are worse things you and Z could be eating for breakfast. So, win win!
*eating asiago bagel now with lotsa cream cheese!*