As far as fast food goes, I’ve always liked Wendy’s. They had a salad bar before anyone else did, which as a kid was like a candy store for me. They had healthy choices on their menu before the obesity epidemic and before it became trendy to offer them. A road trip this weekend found me sitting in the Wendy’s drive-thru line for a quick bite as we dashed from place to place.
Fast food has become synonymous with fatty and unhealthy over the years. On the Wendy’s site it says: “It’s waaaay better than fast food.” To me that implies it should be healthier, but I was so shocked by the pictures of monstrous burgers that I had to look up their nutritional stats when I was back at my computer.
Let me start by giving you the recommendations for total, saturated & trans fats. Many of us fall somewhere in the 2000-2500 calorie range for our daily needs to maintain our weight. Based on that number, and the heart healthy recommendations, you should have no more than 67-83 grams of total fat per day (30% of calories). Saturated fat should be no more than 7% of total calories, which would be 16-19 grams. In addition, trans fat should be limited to about 2 grams per day for everyone.
So, as I sit here looking at the heart-attack-menu…I mean hamburger menu…I am appalled at some of the things I see. There are 3 burgers with 40-60 grams of fat each! To put that into prospective, that’s the equivalent of eating 10-15 TEASPOONS of butter! You also get a full day’s worth (or more) of saturated and trans fats. And imagine how high this number goes once you add fries!
To be fair to Wendy’s they do have several healthy salads and sides. They were also the first to offer a variety of healthy options (instead of just fries) with value meals. But do these mega fat burgers really need to be on the menu? Are they giving the people what they want, or just contributing to a growing health epidemic? What do you think?
- Renee
Labels: Diet, Eating Out, Fast Food, healthy eating, trans fats
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