Are you a person who goes to a fast food restaurant and orders a salad thinking it contains fewer calories than the burgers they sell? If you are the person I just described, I got some bad news for you my friend. For a while now, salads in fast food restaurants are getting a bad name and I’d like explain to you why these salads deserve the bad name!
Ways the fast food restaurants could ruin your salad
Now don’t get me wrong, salads are healthy no doubt about that. But the junk the fast food restaurants are putting in the salads are making them almost worthless and not worth you spending a penny on them. Want to know how they mess up your supposedly healthy salad? Let’s me try to explain.
The salad dressing they are adding to your salad is, to say lightly, bad. It might taste delicious, but the truth is, the dressings are quite bad. Even if you go for a “fat free dressing” you’ll still be consuming about 2 teaspoons worth of sugar per serving. Another downside about the dressing is its nutrition level, which is equal to 0. This is 1 way fast food restaurants are ruining your salad.
Tomatoes, celery, lettuce and sprouts are some of the most common carriers of salmonella, toxic strains of E. coli and other harmful microbes. These microbes could get in your salad from the manure it’s grown with or the contaminated water they’re grown in. Another way these microbes could get in your salad is by a dirty cutting board and knife or from people touching your veggies without having their hands properly washed. This is another way fast food restaurants could ruin your salad.
Fresher vegetables contain more nutrients. Makes sense right? Well, this is another way how fast food restaurants could be ruining your salad. Since the vegetables are probably older than, let’s say a salad you would make yourself, the vegetables contain fewer nutrients.
You’re pulling my leg right?
No I´m not. If you´re still not convinced that fast food restaurant salads aren´t as healthy as you’ve been told by the fast food restaurants, take a look at the next set of comparisons. The Consumerist made a very nice comparison between a salad and a burger from the same fast food restaurant and this is what the results were:
Wendy’s
Wendy´s Garden Sensations Mandarin Chicken Salad
Calories: 550
Carbs: 53g
Sugar: 33g
Sodium: 1230mg
Fat: 26g
Weight: 447g
The ¼ lbs. Double Stack
Calories: 420
Carbs: 34g
Sugar: 7g
Sodium: 940mg
Fat: 20g
Weight: 166g
Taco Bell
Taco Bell Fiesta Taco Salad
Calories: 840
Carbs: 80g
Sugar: 10g
Sodium: 1780mg
Fat: 45g
Weight: 544g
Chicken Grilled Stuft Burrito
Calories: 640
Carbs: 73g
Sugar: 6g
Sodium: 2160mg
Fat: 23g
Weight: 350g
Burger King
Burger King Tendercrisp Chicken Salad
Calories: 580
Carbs: 46g
Sugar: 9g
Sodium: 1730mg
Fat: 35g
Weight: 377g
The Whopper Jr.
Calories: 370
Carbs: 31g
Sugar: 6g
Sodium: 560mg
Fat: 21g
Weight: 158g
I think by now you are getting the picture. The so called healthy salads are losing to the medium sized burgers from the same fast food restaurant and as you can see, some of the differences are fairly big.
So not only are the fast food restaurants ruining your salad by adding a unhealthy dressing, a change of adding harmful microbes and giving you older vegetables than you’d usually use. They are also lying to you about their so called healthy salads, but we’re used to being lied to aren’t we?
June 17th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Very good article. Most people do not realize just how bad fast food salads really are for your health.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
If they’d subscribe to my feed they would know by now. Jokes aside, people think they know what is healthy and what’s not, but you’d be surprised at how much junk there is on their “healthy food list”
June 17th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Good post — salads sound like they are so healthy but there is so much junk and nasty goop that goes into some of the fast foodized salads its amazing.
June 18th, 2008 at 1:50 am
Good post but only half the story. You’ve done a great job setting out the problems, but Id’ve liked to see solutions as well, for instance I use fresh squeezed lemon juice as substitute for salad dressing. It’s great that you’re getting the message out there!
June 18th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Well hebridean, thanks for pointing that out. The healthy salads could be a update to this post or a new post by itself.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Tisk Tisk Mr. Cooker! I found a bunch more typos in the post. I think a lot more people would consider subscribing if there weren’t so many typos.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I really should spend more time reading through my posts for typos. Even though MOW doesn’t show typos.
All typos should be removed now. If you still see any of them, please let me know.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Great job! This article is really important because so many people are fooled by “salad is better” dogma. With fried chicken, cheese, croûtons and whatever else, it’s not less calories at all.