Geneva gets burgers, Lausanne gets lentils.

In Geneva, Wednesday brought news of Burger King moving into the city’s main train station. According to 20 Minutes, the food chain will replace the Buffet de la gare, shown in this photograph taken in 1923. Times are changing, and, so it seems, tastes and ways of eating.

By chance the announcement coincided with World Obesity Day.

According to Burger King’s website, a 660-calorie WHOPPER® burger contains 12 grams of saturated fat, 1.5 grams of trans fat, 11 grams of sugar and 0.98 grams of sodium.

Some diners might then add a soda and french fries. Those who add both would get a further 3 grams of saturated fat and 0.57 grams of sodium from a 380-calorie medium fries, and 35 grams of sugar from a 120-calorie small iced tea.

The World Health Organisation advises limiting the consumption of all of these things. A WHOPPER® delivers around 50% of the recommended maximum daily sodium intake (<2g), around 40% of the recommended free sugar intake (ideally less than 5% of daily calories, around 25g for an adult), and around 50% of daily recommended maximum saturated fat consumption¹. Regarding trans fat the WHO says: “Industrial trans fats (found in processed food, fast food, snack food, fried food, frozen pizza, pies, cookies, margarines and spreads) are not part of a healthy diet.”

Adding a medium fries and small iced tea to the WHOPPER® would get you more than three quarters of the way to the WHO’s sodium limit, more than two thirds of the way to it’s saturated fat limit, and break through the WHO’s ideal lower limit on sugar. The total calorie count would come out at 1,160.

• Iconic Swiss vegetarian restaurant coming to Lausanne (Le News)
• World Obesity Day – how Switzerland measures up (Le News)

Meanwhile over at Lausanne’s main train station, plans are in place to open a branch of the vegetarian restaurant chain Tibits, where the menu includes dishes such as the Beluga Lentil Salad. Unlike Burger King, we couldn’t find any information on the fat, sugar and sodium content of Tibits’ dishes on their website. Vegetarian food is by no means guaranteed to be healthy. Sugar, sodium, and saturated fat can easily find their way into vegetarian food.

According to Claire Honegger at Tibits, the Lausanne branch will open during the autumn or winter of 2018, but an exact date has not yet been fixed.

More on this:
20 Minutes article (in French) - Take a 5 minute French test now
¹ 12 grams of fat is around 108 calories. 108 is 5.4% of a 2000 calorie daily intake. The WHO recommends reducing saturated fat consumption to under 10% of daily calories.

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