Fast food in '05

Nutrition Action Healthletter, March, 2005 by Jayne Hurley, Bonnie Liebman

Small burgers, small fries, and small Cokes. That pretty much summed up McDonald's half a century ago. Today, fast-food menus are crowed with large burgers, large fries, and large Cokes. And the U.S. is crowded with large people.

In the wake of the huge splash made by "Super Size Me," a film that graphically depicts the beefing up of a fast-food eater, McDonald's dropped its Super Size fries and drinks last year.

But its menu is still a minefield of densely packed calorie bombs waiting to explode in your belly. And most come with special bonus harmful fat that are programmed to rough up your arteries.

On the other hand, it's possible to find a handful of decent items--like entree salads and grilled chicken sandwiches--at fast-food burger joints. And the three top chains now disclose artery-clogging trans fat in addition to calories and other numbers, so sensible people can dodge what's not good for them.

Unfortunately, it's tough to dodge sodium. Like most restaurant food, fast food is loaded with salt. That's why we awarded only three Best Bites. Most our Better Bites, while healthier than the rest of the menu, are still unnecessarily high in sodium.

Fast food has taken a hit in recent years. "Fast-casual" chains--like Panera, Au Bon Pain, Chipotle, and Baja Fresh--are nibbling at its heels.

But Americans still get some ten percent of their calories from fast food. And the menus at McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's shape the meals served everywhere from school and hospital cafeterias to snack bars and amusement parks.

So even if you only eat at McDonald's, etc., when you're in a rush or on the road, it's worth knowing what's behind the counter. Here are five key trends at the top burger chains.

1 Super Salads

Fast-food salads mean more than iceberg lettuce these days. Burger King's Fire-Grilled Garden Salads, for example, bump up the vitamins and fiber by adding romaine, carrots, red onions, cucumber, and grape tomatoes. And you can cover it all with fast food's tastiest grilled chicken or shrimp, "served hot from The Pouch." With Vinaigrette, the bad fat (4 grams of saturated plus trans) and calories (around 300) stay low, but the sodium (about 1,800 milligrams) doesn't.

Still, BK's Fire-Grilleds beat its TenderCrisp Salads. The trans and sat fat in the TenderCrisps' fried chicken strips--served hot over the greens--boost the bad fat to 10 or 11 grams and the calories to around 500.

McDonald's Bacon Ranch, California Cobb, and Caesar Salads also come topped with warm Grilled or Crispy Chicken. Go with Grilled to keep the calories at around 400 and the bad fat at 7 grams (much of it from the cheese). Crispy chicken means about S00 calories and 9 or 10 grams of bad fat (half a day's worth). And just about any fast-food salad with chicken and dressing means more than half a day's sodium.

Only one of Wendy's Garden Sensations Salads--the Mandarin Chicken--is a Better Bite. The Taco Supremo, Homestyle Chicken Strips, Chicken BLT, and Spring Mix Salad each has about half a day's bad fat (from their cheese and/or meat) without dressing.

In contrast, the (cheese-free) Mandarin Chicken--with mixed greens, diced chicken, mandarin orange sections, roasted almonds, crispy noodles, and Oriental Sesame dressing--keeps the harmful fat low (4 grams). Use just half the packet of dressing and you'll lop off about 100 calories. But you'll still end up downing 970 mg of sodium--more than a third of a day's worth.

(We allowed more saturated fat in Better Bite salads than in other fast foods because the sat fat is offset by the heart-healthy unsaturated fat from the dressing and by the salads' vegetables.)

2 Healthy: Here Today ...

... gone tomorrow. That's one way to describe the short lives of lighter items on fast-food menus.

Last summer, McDonald's launched--then dropped--its Go Active Happy Meals for adults, which featured an entree salad, bottled water, and a pedometer. Also gone from the chain's "core" menu (which is available nationwide) are the Low Fat Apple Bran Muffin and the regular-size Fruit 'n Yogurt Parfait (only the small remains, though individual outlets may still sell the regular).

Likewise, Burger King buried its Lite Combo Meals, which offered three chicken sandwiches with a side salad and bottled water.

And McDonald's served up the ultimate indignity by abandoning its 2002 pledge to reduce the artery-clogging trans fat in its foods by switching frying oils. McDonald's never made the oil change (though press reports occasionally give the company credit for it).

Salads aside, health-conscious customers are stuck with a limited menu:

* Grilled chicken sandwiches. Wendy's Ultimate Chicken Grill (360 calories) and McDonald's Chicken McGrill (400 calories) are gentler on your waistline than Burger King's Chicken Whopper ($70 calories). That's partly because of the Whopper's 160 calories' worth of mayo and partly because the Whopper is larger. And, like all fast-food chicken, it's bathed in salt water to keep it moist, so it's loaded with sodium.