Fast Food - Can it be for the healthy?

Stuart and I and other health advocates can preach all day long about how much better it is for you to cook your own meals and stay away from fast food restaurants, but realistically, who has the time to cook every meal. I know I don’t and sometimes I only have less than 30min to eat, so I feel like my only options are fast food restaurants. When I used to go grab fast food, I would feel a little guilty because I was unsure of the calories in each meal and what was actually in it. I have a short analysis of fast food restaurants, so you know what the healthiest thing is to order.

Restaurant Analysis
I have compared and contrasted McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and few others to figure out where the best and worst place is to get breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Breakfast – McDonald’s has the best selection. They have the Egg McMuffin (300 calories and 12g of fat), Sausage Burrito (300 calories and 16g of fat), and the Fruit’n Yogurt parfait (with granola 150 calories and without 130 calories and both only have 2g of fat). In comparison, Brueggar’s whole wheat bagel with light cream cheese is 490 calories and 12g fat. The fat grams are high on the McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches, but they are pretty lower in calories. Another great place to get breakfast is Dunkin Donuts. Their Egg White Flatbread sandwiches are all under 300 calories and less than 9g of fat. The Turkey Spinach is only 280 calories and 6g of fat.
Coffee drinks – McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, and Starbucks had similar nutritional facts for their coffee drinks, but Dunkin Donut’ mocha with skim had the least amount of calories and fat grams.

Lunch and Dinner –

A Grilled chicken sandwich sounds healthy, but is it really? Depends on where you go to get it and what you have on it. Wendy’s had the best grilled chicken sandwich with 350 calories and 7g of fat, Burger King was in second with 380 calories and 9g of fat (no mayo), and McDonalds was in last with 420 calories and 10g fat. Make sure the sandwich does not have cheese or mayo on it because that will add about 100 or more calories to the sandwich (scary…huh?).
Salads are assumed to be the healthy alternative, but that is not always the case, especially when going out to fast food restaurants. Be careful of what they top their salads with and make sure you always get grilled chicken and not fried. Wendy’s had the best salads, but with out all the crunchy stuff on top (i.e. croutons, almonds, crunchy noodles, etc.). Their two best salads were the Mandarin Chicken and Chicken Caesar and they contained 180 calories and the Mandarin only had 2g of fat and the Caesar only 4g of fat. If you wanted to add more crunch and flavor for the Mandarin add half of the pack of almonds for 70 calories and 5.5g of fat and use the fat free French dressing, which is only 70 calories. That would be a total meal of 320 calories and 7.5g of fat… not bad at all! For the Caesar, I’ve used the fat free French dressing before instead of Caesar dressing and it tasted great. Beware of Wendy’s BLT grilled chicken salad because it has 470 calories and 27g of fat without any extra toppings or dressing. Burger King and McDonalds both have their salad pre-packaged with cheese or the toppings, so if you don’t use dressing their salads are pretty healthy. McDonald’s highest calorie salad is the Southwest grilled chicken salad, which has 320 and 9g of fat without dressing. Because it has corn and black bean salsa on it, I think it taste great without dressing. Burger King just has a basic grilled chicken salad with lots of veggies and cheese that is 270 calories and 9g of fat without dressing.

Other – chili, wraps, and desserts.
A lot of the fast foods have developed these inexpensive grilled chicken snack wraps, which come off as being healthy. They aren’t that big and they are made with grilled chicken, but they are not that innocent. They have around 270 calories and 10g of fat and they are small! I know I was expecting around 150 calories and 6g of fat in one snack wrap, so I shocked to find out this information.
For dessert, the best place to get ice cream is McDonalds! Their ice cream cone has only 150 cal and 3.5g fat and their strawberry sundae has 280 calories and only 6g of fat! I know where I will be getting ice cream this summer. Be weary of the soft serve ice cream treats with mix-ins like McFlurries and Frostys. They all have over 480 calories!!!
I do want to mention Wendy’s chili because it has a lot of protein and fiber and the large is only 280 calories. It is probably one of the best things you can get for dinner at a fast food restaurant.

I hope this makes eating out at fast food restaurants less stressful and a lot healthier!

- Alexandra Jasinowski