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Fast Food Restaurants & Nutrition Facts Compared....SCARY

Fast food is bad food. That's pretty much common knowledge these days. The majority of the foods served at fast food restaurants contain an insane amount of calories, tons of fat (including the very evil trans fat), and are high in pretty much everything else that you'd want your food to be low in. Long story short, it's the kind of food you want to avoid eating.

But, you probably know this already. The funny thing is, most of the world doesn't seem to care. The fast food restaurants continue to do just fine because people continue to eat their unhealthy food. So I figured, if you are still going to eat this junk, you might as well at least know which is the best of the worst, and which is the worst of the worst.

To show this, I've compared the nutrition facts of the most popular foods from over 20 popular fast food restaurants to see how each restaurant's version of the same food stacks up against the others. If this isn't enough to convince you to eat less (or none) of this stuff, it will at least give you the information you need to make the better choice and avoid making the worst one. Enjoy...

*NOTE #1* The tables below are sortable. Clicking a category (calories, fat, trans fat, etc.) will sort the data in that column from lowest to highest. Clicking it again will sort it from highest to lowest.

*NOTE #2* Any questions you may have about anything you see in this fast food comparison is most likely answered at the bottom of this very page or in the "Notes" of each comparison. Be sure to check it out for clarifications on anything that may seem unclear.

French Fries (Large) Compared

Fast Food Restaurant	Type	Serving Size (g)	Calories	Total Fat (g)	Saturated Fat (g)		Carbs (g)	Sodium (mg)
McDonald's	Regular	170	570	30	6		70	330
Burger King	Regular	160	500	28	6		57	820
Burger King	Salt Not Added	160	500	28	6		57	530
Wendy's	Regular	Unknown	540	26	4		69	550
Arby's	Homestyle	213	566	37	7		82	1029
Arby's	Curly	198	631	37	7		73	1476
Hardee's	Regular	193	610	28	6		78	370
Hardee's	Crispy Curls	153	480	23	6		60	1190
A&W	Regular	156	430	18	4.5		61	640
A&W	Chili	170	370	16	4.5		49	780
A&W	Cheese	170	380	19	5		50	870
A&W	Chili Cheese	198	400	19	5		51	990
In-N-Out Burger**	Regular**	125**	400**	18**	5**		54**	245**
Jack In The Box	Natural Cut	236	640	33	8		77	1180
Jack In The Box	Seasoned Curly	170	550	31	6		60	1200
White Castle	Regular	244	700	34	6		89	560
Sonic	Regular	98	280	11	2		42	135
Sonic	Cheese	125	380	19	7		44	600
Sonic	Chili/Cheese	186	450	25	9		48	610
Dairy Queen	Regular	280	730	33	6		100	1530
KFC*	Potato Wedges*	102*	260*	13*	2.5*		33*	740*
Carl's Jr.	Regular	198	620	29	6		80	380
Popeyes**	Regular**	88**	310**	17**	7**		35**	660**
Del Taco	Regular	198	490	32	5		47	380

* KFC does not have any "french fries." They do have "potato wedges" which is somewhat close, so I included this information above for comparison purposes. However, I did not take it into account when showing the best/worst since they are technically not "french fries."

** In-N-Out Burger and Popeyes had one item listed as just "French Fries." No actual size (large, small, etc.) was given. Therefore, they were also not taken into account when showing the best/worst french fries.

• Best: Sonic (regular)
  Sonic's basic french fries are my pick for the best of this comparison. It's not hard to see why either. Due to having the smallest serving size of all of the other fast food restaurants, their large fries ended up being the lowest in every single one of the compared nutrition facts. Not to mention, with 0 grams of trans fat, it was one of just two large french fries that contained 0 grams. The other? Another one from Sonic... this time their cheese fries.
• Worst: Dairy Queen (regular) & White Castle (regular)
  It was hard to pick an official worst choice here, as there was a lot of trans fat being thrown around. In the end, I went with Dairy Queen's basic fries for being the highest in calories (seriously, 730 calorie fries? Yikes.) and sodium. White Castle's basic fries were also picked here not so much for calories (although at 700, it was right up there in second place) but because of it containing more trans fat (11 evil grams) than any of the others. Of all of the items being compared in this entire comparison, french fries are easily one of the worst all around trans fat offenders.
• Notes: For this comparison, I tried to use each fast food restaurant's "Large" french fries. In two cases however, there was no "large" version. So, I instead used whatever that restaurant's largest size was. For White Castle it was "Sack," and for Del Taco it was "Medium."

This article I did not write myself, but it's almost what I was looking for. Last night I gave into temptation, and went for fast food.... :( I wanted to know how much "garbage" I was actually consuming, and after searching a few articles I stumbled across this one. Granted a few restaurants are exclusive to the United States in this article, but I feel it's my job to inform you about these popular restaurants, far and wide...no pun intended.

I hope the next time anyone goes to the states and thinks, "hey maybe i'll try a different restaurant" THINK TWICE PLEASE!

PLEASE LEAVE ME YOUR COMMENTS!!!!!