Nutritionist and personal chef Natalia Hancock knows that snacking is part of the human condition. “We’re programmed to seek out food; the trick is to munch on snacks that are healthy and easy.”
When creating Rouge Tomate’s bar menu (Hancock is the culinary nutritionist for this healthy Michelin-starred, Upper East Side restaurant), she rejected calorically dense bar nuts in favor of humble popcorn, a whole grain with a generous dose of fiber. But Hancock purified, and glamorized, this movie snack staple by replacing butter with olive oil and adding unusual seasonings.
Replace your $300 Kitchen-Aid with a $30 air popper
Why to sneak your homemade popcorn into the movies: According to Hancock, movie theater popcorn is usually popped in refined coconut oil, so it absorbs lots of saturated fat. A medium-sized movie popcorn is well over 1,000 calories and can have more than 50g of saturated fat. In comparison, one cup of air-popped plain popcorn is just 31 calories, and it doesn’t taste like styrofoam packing like the AMC variety. Two cups is a serving, says Hancock, but if you feel the need to pig out, popcorn is a safe food to overdo it on.
