Watching what I eat when I go out is always a challenge, but especially so at the movies. Honestly, many people say the best bet is often to sneak in a bag of low-calorie snacks rather than pick the one or two items off the menu that don’t have a RIDICULOUS amount of calories and fat. Even the innocent looking pretzel bites at Regal Cinemas have 970 calories in them (including the tiny tub of cheese dip and the oil (or whatever it is) that’s liberally brushed on the pretzels). So when I recently saw a pre-show ad for AMC Theatres Smart MovieSnacks Pack, I was so excited I almost knocked my Coke Zero all over myself!
Here is what you will get in your pack, at a current retail price of just $7 and a total calorie count of 453:
*Mini-bag of PopCorners popped corn chips (Kettle Corn flavor)
*Odwalla trail mix bar (chocolate chip)
*Chiquita fruit chips
*Bottle of Dasani water (which you can swap out for Coke Zero or Diet Coke, adding miniscule amount of calories)
Not bad! My favorite snack was the PopCorners. I had never had these before and they were definitely delicious. I was expecting them to be something like my favorite Popchips but these are lighter and crunchier. I already love Odwalla bars, and while I don’t eat fruit chips very often, I enjoyed the Chiquita ones as well. All of the snacks were gone by the time the movie actually started.
I do have one complaint. When Eric went back into the lobby to buy me the snack pack (at the AMC Theatre near Old Town Alexandria), they had a hard time finding it at the upstairs snack bar and wound up sending him to the downstairs snack bar to get it! It took so long that he was minutes away from missing the beginning of Captain America! I don’t know if the difficulty finding it reflects more on the number of people requesting the pack or AMC’s efforts to market it, but either way, not cool to make it so hard to get. I think it should be more prominently displayed so that more people know it is available. I had no idea until we were in our seats watching the pre-show ads.
Look for the Smart MovieSnacks Pack whenever you visit an AMC theatre. And stay tuned to see if other chains follow suit – I hope so!
The Mapless Traveler 
I love movie popcorn, but the calories are tough. You’d have to not eat for a week after a big tub (and I’ve eaten a big tub before the movie starts!). One reason we don’t go to the movies anymore. (The other is the lack of a remote; if theaters can figure out how to let patrons pause the movie, I’ll be first in line!).