Better things download.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/3873254197_f91457de77.jpg” alt=”3873254197_f91457de77″ title=”3873254197_f91457de77″ width=”270″ height=”180″ class=”alignleft size-full wp-image-19991″ />You know you’re economically better off sneaking your own snacks into the theater, but as long as your snacks don’t include buckets of lard or bacon grease milkshakes, you’re eating healthier, too. Scientists, who know that calculating the nutritional value of movie food is most certainly “in the public interest,” determined that:

“a medium popcorn and soda combo at Regal Cinemas is equivalent of three McDonald’s Quarter Pounders with twelve sticks of butter. That’s 1,610 calories and three day’s worth of saturated fat.”

Wonderful! I personally like the article’s analogy for AMC’s large popcorn better, which is apparently equivalent to “eating a pound of baby back ribs topped with a scoop of Haagen-Dazs.”

Yeah, seriously, just get some Goobers and chips at the Food Emporium before the movie and you’ll be good to go. (And good to, like, not die.)

Photo from Flickr user Wahlander under the Creative Commons License.