Zack Cirincione

What Dessert Food is the Worst to Eat Before Sleeping

	Chocolate Frosted Donuts	Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies	Cookies & Cream Ice Cream
Serving Size	1 Donut (55g)	2 Cookies (27g)	½ cup (65g)
Calories (kcal)	270	120	150
Fat (g)	18	5	7
Carbohydrates (g)	27	18	20
First 3 Ingredients	Sugar, Enriched Wheat Flour, Palm Oil	Unbleached Enriched Flour, Semisweet Chocolate Chips, Palm Oil	Milk, Cream, Skim Milk

            Before you head to sleep you may have a craving for some type of dessert food some of which include Entenmann’s Chocolate Frosted Donuts, Chips Ahoy’s Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies, or Blue Bunny’s Cookies & Cream Ice Cream. A snack before bed may seem like a good idea, but it isn’t so great for your body. If you go to sleep soon after eating any food you will not use as much of the energy you gained from carbs, fats, and sugars, and it will be stored in the body as fat. Although all of these foods are bad, some are worse than others, and out of these three I believe the donuts would be the worst if you follow the suggested serving size. I think this because it is larger and it has a sugar coating.

            When looking at the tables you can see that the donut has the most amounts of calories (270kcal), fat (18g), and carbs (27g). These are all bad to eat before you sleep because they are supposed to be burnt off when energy is used. When you are sleeping you don’t use the energy and all of these foods are stored as fat. Not only that, but sugar is the first ingredient on the ingredient list showing it is the most abundant ingredient. Sugar is a carbohydrate which gives a short term energy boost. This would make it more difficult for someone to fall asleep, and will also be stored as fat if it is not used. Coming in second with the amounts of calories (150kcal), fats (7g), and carbs (20g) is the ice cream. All though this will cause a lot of fat to be stored overnight, sugar is not as high on the ingredients list which would most likely make it easier to fall asleep. The cookies have the least calories (120kcal), fats (5g), and carbs (18g) making it seem like the best choice, but this could also be because of the unreasonable serving size.

            The serving size for the cookies is only 2 cookies, but when I have cookies I usually eat somewhere around 5. This would mean I would be getting 2.5 times the calories, fats, and carbs. If the numbers were adjusted in this way than the cookies would definitely be the least healthy out of the three. There is also an unrealistic serving size for the ice cream. It says there are 14 servings in one container, but I usually finish it in around 6. That means I’d be getting about 2.3 times what is on the table. This would push the numbers even higher than the tweaked numbers for the cookies. The donuts, on the other-hand, have a realistic serving size at 1 donut. This would make the donut the best to eat before bed out of these three, but not eating before bed would be the best decision.