You Can Eat Your Heart Out At The Fair Dietician Tours The Booths, Finds High-Fat Munchies Almost Everywhere

Going to the Spokane Interstate Fair with a dietician is like attending a wedding with a divorce lawyer.

It’s still possible to have fun, as long as you ignore the facts.

Fact is, most of the food served by fair vendors is high-fat to begin with.

Fact is, much of it is dumped into deep-fryers.

Fact is, most people who attended opening day of the fair on Friday scarfed down the stuff as if an after-lunch visit to the vegetable exhibit would make everything OK.

“This is a nightmare,” said Ronda Prentiss, who loves fairs but can’t stand fatty foods.

Prentiss teaches healthy eating to cardiac patients and others trying to cut their fat and cholesterol. She’s instructive without being critical.

Growing up on a Palouse farm, she ate wheat kernels by the handful during harvest. She still eats meat on occasion, but hasn’t bought beef since the mad-cow scare.

Her daughters, ages 3 and 4, have never tasted cotton candy.

“Come and get some cavities,” she said, thinking how she would introduce them to the thrill of spun sugar.

In short, she was the perfect person to scan the food booths at the request of The Spokesman-Review. Prentiss quizzed the sellers in her friendly way, asking whether the oil was solid before it was heated and whether the pesto is made with olive oil.

The good news is, she found low-fat fare, including some that didn’t look half bad. But she had to look hard among the super burritos, funnel cakes and meatball sandwiches.

A conscientious eater could start with the teriyaki chicken breast, grilled salmon or an ostrich burger. That rare diner could have iced tea and an ear of corn on the side.

“Some people don’t have butter,” said Ron Schoenberger, who sells the fresh corn for the Spokane East Rotary Club. “My son, he won’t even put salt on them. He’s a nurse.”

Prentiss approved.

For dessert, she suggested some fat-free peach yogurt, a fruit bowl or a nice caramel apple.

Yeah, right.

Judging from the stains on people’s shirts, a typical meal is a corn dog downed with Coke, and an elephant ear for dessert.

“He deep fries them in homemade batter. They’re a foot long,” said the proud woman serving the dogs.

Prentiss thanked the server politely before walking away. “Mmm-mmm,” she said in her best Jimmy Dean impersonation.

Probably 400 calories in the dog alone, she figured, and maybe a few hundred more in the batter - all of it from fat.

No telling how much oil soaks into the dough when an elephant ear is cooked. One tablespoon? Four tablespoons? Could be 40 grams of fat - nearly half a day’s allowance for most people - from that one treat alone.

Those are obvious killers. It’s the side dishes - French fries, potato salad, clam chowder - that sneak up on folks.

Sure, fair-goers walk a lot. But it takes a lot of trips from the swine barn to the needlepoint exhibit to burn off the fat from one funnel cake.

Getting on the Zipper right after a greasy meal might work, but Prentiss doesn’t approve of that plan, saying she doesn’t want to encourage binge-and-purge dieting.

Better to eat right in the first place, she said, suddenly reminded of a question she meant to ask a companion.

“So, that burrito you had for lunch - is that the way you usually eat?”

Only at the fair.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Schedule online A complete fair schedule is available online at http://www.VirtuallyNW.com