Fast food: the year's best & worst.Few things in life are certain. But a Big Mac's always a Big Mac. Right? Maybe it is. But the rest of the fast food industry is rapidly changing. Companies are always tinkering with their recipes--throwing in a little more or less fat, or maybe a pinch more or less salt. Oh sure, the fries and chicken nuggets A chicken nugget is either whole or composed from a paste of finely minced chicken or chicken skin, which is then coated in batter or breadcrumbs before being cooked. Fast-food restaurants typically deep-fry their nuggets in oil. are always lousy. But how do you know what else is good or bad this year? You don't, unless you're one of the few customers who ask for nutrition information...or unless you look over our shoulder as we take a look at the best and worst citizens of Fast Food Land. BURGERS Best: McDonald's McLean Deluxe The McLean Deluxe was a hamburger marketed as a healthy alternative to McDonald's regular menu. It was released in the United States in 1991. It had a reduced fat content compared to other McDonald's hamburgers. This was achieved through the addition of carrageenan to the meat. . You could eat five of'em and still get less fat than you'd get from one Burger King Double Whopper Whopper - WarGames with Cheese. That's because the McLean is the only fast food burger that's made from truly lean hamburger meat. You could also get a small burger at McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Roy Rogers
Leonard Franklin Slye (November 5, 1911 – July 6, 1998), who became famous as Roy Rogers, was a singer and cowboy actor. , Hardee's, or Jack in the Box. The meat isn't lean, but you get no more than two ounces of it. That makes them among the lowest-fat fast food sand-wiches. Worst: Carl's Jr. Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger. Last March, we dubbed dub 1 tr.v. dubbed, dub·bing, dubs 1. To tap lightly on the shoulder by way of conferring knighthood. 2. To honor with a new title or description. 3. Jack in the Box's Colossus Colossus - (A huge and ancient statue on the Greek island of Rhodes). 1. The competition for the new heart stopper was intense. There's no end to the Double Bacon Cheese-burgers, Whoppers
Whoppers are chocolate-coated malted milk balls produced by The Hershey Company. , Ultimate Cheeseburgers, and Super Star Hamburgers. But Carl's Jr., a mediumsize chain in California, Arizona, and Utah, came up with a way to distance itself from the pack--stuff a couple of deep-fried onion rings under a bun that's already burdened with two strips of bacon, a slice of American cheese, and a quarter pound of greasy ground beef. That adds up to 63 grams of fat (three more than the Colossus) and a record-shattering day and a half's worth of artery-clogging saturated fat saturated fat, any solid fat that is an ester of glycerol and a saturated fatty acid. The molecules of a saturated fat have only single bonds between carbon atoms; if double bonds are present in the fatty acid portion of the molecule, the fat is said to be . Dishonorable dis·hon·or·a·ble adj. 1. Characterized by or causing dishonor or discredit. 2. Lacking integrity; unprincipled. dis·hon Mention: Burger King Double Whopper with Cheese. As much fat as the Carl's Jr., but 25 percent less saturated fat. And it's available nationwide. Great. CHICKEN & TURKEY SANDWICHES Best: McDonald's McGrilled Chicken Classic. You'd have to eat 9 1/2 McGrilled Chicken Classic sandwiches to get as much fat as you'd find in just one Burger King BK Broiler broiler a young (about 8 weeks old) male or female chicken weighing 3 to 3.5 lb. Chicken Sandwich Noun 1. chicken sandwich - a sandwich made with a filling of sliced chicken sandwich - two (or more) slices of bread with a filling between them . McDonald's tells us that the Classic is a hot seller, even though it's now served without mayo (that's how it ends up with just three grams of fat). Honorable Mention: Boston Chicken Chicken Breast Sandwich; Carl's Jr. Charbroiled BBQ BBQ barbecue Chicken Sandwich. They've got a respectable four-to-six grams of fat...but they'll saddle you with 680 to 885 mg of sodium. Worst: Rax Turkey Bacon Club. More fat than two Quarter Pounders and three-quarters of a day's sodium. Not bad for a small Midwestern chain. Dishonorable Mention: Boston Chicken Chunky Chicken Salad Sandwich; Burger King Chicken Sandwich. Boston's 763-calorie sandwich packs as much fat as two large orders of McDonald's French Fries. Ditto for Burger King's. Boston takes perfectly good rotisserie chicken and slathers it with mayonnaise. The chicken for Burger King's sandwich, on the other hand, is anything but perfectly good. It's fried. And while we're dumping on Burger King, watch out for its BK Broiler Chicken Sandwich. Last year the company switched from a light mayo dressing to a full-fat one. Boing! The fat jumped from 10 grams to 29 grams. That makes it as bad as most chains' fried chicken Fried chicken is chicken which is dipped in a breading mixture and then deep fried, pan fried or pressure fried. The breading seals in the juices but also absorbs the fat of the fryer, which is sometimes seen as unhealthy. sandwiches. Wipe off the mayo and you cut the fat by 80 percent. ROTISSERIE & FRIED CHICKEN Best: Chick-fil-A Grilled 'n Lites; Boston Chicken 1/4 White Meat Chicken without wing or skin. Any company's rotisserie or fried chicken breast or drumstick drumstick /drum·stick/ (-stik) a nuclear lobule attached by a slender strand to the nucleus of some polymorphonuclear leukocytes of normal females but not of normal males. is okay, as long as you remove the skin and breading and don't eat the fatty wing meat (if it comes with the breast). Skinning it cuts the fat by as much as half, and there's little fat difference between skinless fried and skinless non-fried. We went for the Chick-fil-A grilled skewers and the Boston Chicken because they have about half the sodium of most other skinned chicken breasts. If you can't live without a little skin, get it from the spit. Rotisseried skin has less fat than fried skin. Worst: Popeyes Mild or Spicy Thigh. Whoopee! A piece of chicken with more than half a day's saturated fat. What on earth are they frying in? "A blend of solid vegetable and animal shortenings," admits a company spokesperson. Ahhhh. ROAST BEEF SANDWICHES Best: Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sandwich. Roy's got a winner. At just four grams of fat (only one of them saturated), his Roast Beef Sandwich rivals a McDonald's McGrilled Chicken Classic sandwich. Why does Roy's roast beef have less than half the fat of anybody else's? Extremely lean roast beef, my dear Watson. Roy Rogers was bought by Hardee's in 1990, so many items on the two restaurants' menus are now the same. Not so for the roast beef. Hardee's Regular Roast Beef Sandwich has almost three times the fat of Roy's. The one thing Hardee's should have copied from Roy it didn't. Honorable Mention: Arby's Light Roast Beef Deluxe. If Roy's not around when you crave roast beef, try an Arby's Light. It'll set you back ten grams of fat (four of them saturated). That's not great, but it's only about half as bad as Arby's Regular Roast Beef or any of the "Giant," "Super," "Deluxe," or other special roast beef sandwiches at Arby's or Rax. Worst: Rax BBC BBC in full British Broadcasting Corp. Publicly financed broadcasting system in Britain. A private company at its founding in 1922, it was replaced by a public corporation under royal charter in 1927. . No, it's not for munching munching - Exploration of security holes of someone else's computer for thrills, notoriety or to annoy the system manager. Compare cracker. See also hacked off. in front of the shortwave short·wave adj. 1. Having a wavelength of approximately 10 to 200 meters. 2. Capable of receiving or transmitting at wavelengths of approximately 10 to 200 meters: a shortwave radio. radio. The "BBC" stands for "beef, bacon, and cheddar." Maybe they ought to call it the "Rax HMAC HMAC - Keyed-Hashing Message Authentication " (for "Help! My Arteries are Clogging"). The company says it doesn't know how much saturated fat a BBC has. Smart, fellas. Dishonorable Mention: Arby's Bac'N Cheddar Deluxe. What do you expect, with a name like that? More than half its calories come from fat. Eat one and you'll have filled half your arteries' daily quota of saturated fat and almost half your sodium limit. Even a Big Mac would be better. BAKED POTATOES Best: Any plain baked potato; Rax Cheese-Broccoli Baked Potato. If you don't like your baked potatoes plain and you live in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia West Virginia, E central state of the United States. It is bordered by Pennsylvania and Maryland (N), Virginia (E and S), and Kentucky and, across the Ohio R., Ohio (W). Facts and Figures Area, 24,181 sq mi (62,629 sq km). Pop. , head for the nearest Rax. The small chain uses a cheese-flavored--instead of a real cheese--sauce on its Cheese-Broccoli Baked Potato. That keeps the fat to zero. Cheese and broccoli broccoli (brŏk`əlē) [Ital.,=sprouts], variety of cabbage grown for the edible immature flower panicles. It is the same variety (Brassica oleracea botrytis) as the cauliflower and is similarly cultivated. potatoes from Wendy's (14 grams of fat), Arby's (18 grams), and Carl's Jr. (31 grams) just can't compete. If only Rax could get the sodium down from a highish 600 + mg. Honorable Mention: Wendy's Sour Cream & Chives chives alliumschoenoprasm. Baked Potato. Two tablespoons of real sour cream add up to only six grams of fat. But, dairy being what it is, four of the six grams are saturated. That's 20 percent of your sat fat for the day. Ask for the sour cream on the side and use just one tablespoon. Worst: Carl's Jr. Bacon & Cheese Potato. If you're in the mood for three-quarters of a day's saturated fat and 730 calories, try a couple of Quarter Pounders instead. Dishonorable Mention: Arby's Deluxe Baked Potato. Almost a day's sat fat. Chalk it up to the mound of butter/margarine blend, sour cream, and cheese. MAIN-DISH SALADS Best: McDonald's Chunky Chicken Salad with Lite Vinaigrette Dressing. Grilled chicken salads, garden salads, and side salads are great places to find vegetables with little fat. But McDonald's deserves a special pat on the arches for keeping the sodium down...in the dressing as well as the salad. A packet of McDonald's Lite Vinaigrette adds only 240 mg of sodium. A packet of Arby's Light Italian will cost you 1,110 mg--almost half a day's worth. Honorable Mention: Burger King Broiled broil 1 v. broiled, broil·ing, broils v.tr. 1. To cook by direct radiant heat, as over a grill or under an electric element. 2. To expose to great heat. v. Chicken Salad with Light Italian Dressing Noun 1. Italian dressing - a vinaigrette with garlic and herbs: oregano and basil and dill dressing, salad dressing - savory dressings for salads; basically of two kinds: either the thin French or vinaigrette type or the creamy mayonnaise type . A little more fat and sat fat than McDonald's, but remarkably low in sodium. Worst: Taco Bell Taco Bell Corp., a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc., is a Mexican-style quick service restaurant chain based in Irvine, California, United States. The restaurant has locations primarily in the United States and Canada, but also operates outlets in several other markets. Taco Salad The taco salad is a Mexican inspired dish consisting of the contents of a taco on a bed of lettuce instead of a tortilla. Some forms of taco salad are served in an edible tortilla shell bowl. The Taco salad first appeared in America in the 1960s. . It's the fattiest food you can buy at Taco Bell. What's so salad-ey about meat, cheese, and sour cream piled into a fried taco shell on a bed of iceberg lettuce iceberg lettuce n. A crisp, round, compact head of lettuce with light green, tightly folded leaves. [From its pale color. ? And what's so salad-ey about 80 percent of the fat and saturated fat you should eat in an entire day? Dishonorable Mention: Boston Chicken Chicken Caesar Salad caesar salad n. A tossed salad of greens, anchovies, croutons, and grated cheese with a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, and a raw or coddled egg. with Dressing. Blame it on the dressing. The average American woman gets more fat from salad dressing than from any other food. And no wonder. Four tablespoons of regular dressing can cost you as much fat as two Quarter Pounders. That's how Boston's salad manages to pack three-quarters of a day's fat. Even naked, it has as much saturated fat as a Big Mac (blame it on all the cheese). MILK SHAKES milk shake a solution of sodium bicarbonate administered to racehorses by stomach tube 4 to 6 hours before racing to produce a metabolic acidosis. Promoted as a means of producing relief from tying-up and delaying the onset of fatigue by producing additional buffering to counteract Best: Rax Yogurt Shakes. They've got a single gram of fat. McDonald's Shakes used to be as low, but in 1993 they switched from skim milk skim milk n. The milk from which the cream has been removed. skim milk the residue from whole milk after the cream has been skimmed off. In today's usage it is the residue after the butterfat is removed. to a skimwhole milk mixture without telling anyone. That boosted the fat to five or six grams (almost four of them arteryclogging). Worst: Arby's Polar Swirls. Think of your typical fast food shake as a glass of whole milk poured into a 12-ounce can of soda. That's how its fat and calories measure up. But thanks to imbedded imbedded, adj See embedded. bits of candies like Oreos and Snickers
Snickers is a sweet bar made by Mars, Incorporated. , Arby's Polar Swirls make the typical shake look good. The average Polar Swirl has as much fat and sat fat as a Quarter Pounder... and 17 teaspoons of sugar. Think Fast It's not easy, but you can get a decent meal at a fast food restaurant. Just remember to take this chart along with you. There were no strict criteria for our recommendations. "Best Bites" generally have the least total fat, saturated fat, sodium, and/or sugar in their category. "Worst Bites" generally have the most. Products are ranked within each category from least fat to most. Fat and sat fat numbers are rounded to the nearest gram.
Calories Fat Sat Fat Sodium
(g) (g) (mg)
Hamburger
McDonald's Hamburger 270 9 3 530
Wendy's Jr. Hamburger 270 9 3 600
Hardee's or Roy Rogers Hamburger 260 9 4 460
Burger King Hamburger 260 10 4 500
Jack in the Box Hamburger 280 11 4 430
McDonald's McLean Deluxe 340 12 5 810
McDonald's Quarter Pounder 420 20 8 690
McDonald's Big Mac 510 26 9 930
McDonald's Quarter Pounder
with Cheese 520 29 13 1,160
Burger King Whopper 630 39 11 850
Jack in the Box Colossus Burger 940 60 25 1,670
Burger King Double Whopper
with Cheese 950 63 24 1,340
Carl's Jr. Double Western
Bacon Cheeseburger 1,030 63 32 1,810
Chicken & Turkey Sandwiches
McDonald's McGrilled Chicken
Classic 250 3 1 510
Boston Chicken Chicken Breast 422 4 1 885
Carl's Jr. Charbroiled BBQ
Chicken 310 6 2 680
Taco Bell Chicken Burrito 345 13 5 854
Burger King BK Broiler 540 29 6 480
Boston Chicken Chunky Chicken
Salad Sandwich 763 43 7 1,362
Burger King Chicken Sandwich 700 43 9 1,400
Rax Turkey Bacon Club 680 47 na 1,898
Rotisserie & Fried Chicken
Chick-fil-A Grilled 'n Lites 97 2 na 280
Boston Chicken 1/4 White Meat
Chicken without wing or skin 164 4 2 356
KFC Rotisserie Gold Quarter Breast
without wing or skin 199 6 2 667
KFC Original Recipe Drumstick 130 7 2 210
KFC Rotisserie Gold Quarter Breast
and Wing with skin 335 19 5 1,104
KFC Original Recipe Breast 360 20 5 870
Popeyes Mild or Spicy Thigh(1) 300 23 11 535
KFC Extra Tasty Crispy Thigh 370 25 6 540
Roast Beef Sandwiches
Roy Rogers Roast Beef 260 4 1 700
Arby's Light Roast Beef Deluxe 294 10 4 826
Hardee's Regular Roast Beef 270 11 5 780
Arby's Regular Roast Beef 383 18 7 936
Arby's Bac 'N Cheddar Deluxe 512 32 9 1,094
Rax BBC 716 51 na 1,453
Fish Sandwiches
McDonald's Filet-O-Fish 360 16 4 710
Burger King BK Big Fish 720 43 8 1,090
Nuggets & Fries
Burger King Chicken Tenders (6) 250 12 3 530
McDonald's Chicken McNuggets
(6) 300 18 4 530
McDonald's French Fries
(large) 450 22 4 290
Baked Potatoes
Rax Cheese-Broccoli 281 0 0 621
Wendy's Sour Cream & Chives 380 6 4 40
Wendy's Broccoli & Cheese 460 14 3 440
Arby's Broccoli 'N Cheddar 417 18 7 361
Carl's Jr. Broccoli & Cheese 590 31 11 830
Arby's Deluxe 621 36 18 605
Carl's Jr. Bacon & Cheese 730 43 15 1,670
Main-Dish Salads
McDonald's Chunky Chicken Salad
with 4 Tbs. Lite Vinaigrette 210 7 2 560
Burger King Broiled Chicken Salad
with 2 Tbs. Light Italian 215 11 5 160
Boston Chicken Chicken Caesar
Salad without dressing 400 18 9 1,250
McDonald's Chef Salad with 4 Tbs.
Reduced Calorie French 370 19 5 1,220
Boston Chicken Chicken Caesar
Salad with 4 Tbs. dressing 670 47 13 1,860
Taco Bell Taco Salad 838 55 16 1,132
Shakes
Rax Yogurt Shake
[(16 oz.).sup.2] 277 1 na 157
McDonald's Shake
[(16 oz.).sup.2] 333 5 4 193
Arby's Polar Swirl
[(12 oz.)sup.2] 502 21 8 384
= Best Bite. = Worst Bite. (1)=average for the items listed. (2)=Average for the entire line. na = Not available. Information obtained from restaurant chains The following is a list of restaurant chains. See also: Fast-food restaurant, Casual dining, List of reference tables. International
The use of information from this article for commercial purposes is prohibited without written permission from CSPI CSPI Center for Science in the Public Interest CSPI Corporate Service Price Index CSPI Cumulative Schedule Performance Index . |
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