It’s all going downhill people!
Although I believe in taking responsibility when it comes to your weight, I know the fast food chains of this country aren’t helping. It like a nuclear arms race except with fat and calories. The prices get smaller, the amount of food gets bigger, and your body hates you just a little bit more each time. Today’s heavyweight battle will take place between the Domino’s Bread Bowl (Chicken Carbonara), KFC Chicken Pot Pie, and Taco Bell Fiesta Salad, three ‘meals’ where you get to eat the thing they’re packaged in (bowl, pie crust, taco shell). Let’s find out which one is more damaging to your arteries, heart, self-confidence, well-being, and dignity.
The Chicken Carbonara
Ah yes, the Chicken Carbonara. If you go to Domino’s website, they don’t have the nutrition facts up for the bread bowls yet. Luckily, the people over at yumyucky.com called up Domino’s and got the scoop. I don’t blame them, if I was on their marketing team, I’d conveniently ‘forget’ to add this to the nutrition list too. Oops! Let’s see what we got here for the biggest offender:
Things that jump out at you immediately: 740 calories, 28 grams of fat, 12 grams of saturated fat, 05. grams of trans fat, 1140mg of Sodium, and 94 grams of carbs. Good lord. Oh, and that’s just for half of it, because they call these little meals “two servings”…which means you can double everything listed above if you take down the whole thing. When you can crank out 50 grams of fat, 1500 calories, 2300 mg of sodium and close to 200 g of carbs in one meal, you know your body is going to hate you. That’s 120% of your daily saturated fat suggested intake in one single meal, in one tiny bowl. But hey, it was only 5 bucks right?
I think the reason they list it as two servings is just in case you’re not interested in eating the bowl. Who would order a bread bowl and not eat it? Isn’t that the big appeal of this thing? I also love that if you order a Bread Bowl online instead of calling you get $1 off your bill, which means you can get a heart-attack baked into a bread bowl without even have to leave your computer chair or pick up a phone.
To put this in perspective, if you want to burn off the calories from eating one of these things, you have to run 15 miles. Yeah, that’s worth it. Moral of the story: if you’re going to run a marathon tomorrow, feel free to eat 2 of these things and you’ll almost finish burning the calories at the end.
The KFC Chicken Pot Pie
Here we have the KFC Chicken Pot Pie. Yikes. 690 Calories, 40 grams of fat, 31 grams of saturated fat, 1760 mg of sodium, and 57 grams of carbs. Throw in a biscuit to complete the failure pot-pie and you get another 200 calories and 6 grams of saturated fat. Okay, so the calories, carbs, and sodium is lower than the Bread Bowl. Big deal. You also have 37 grams of saturated fat in this pie of pain – that’s 200% of your daily requirement, condensed into a 5 dollar meal made by some yokel. YEE HAW! Search “KFC Chicken Pot Pie” on Google and the second link that comes up is a website begging people not to eat them. That can’t be good for business.
I do have to give props for KFC coming through with GRILLED chicken on their menu now. I bet the Colonel is rolling over in his grave and their marketing people are thinking, “Our name is Kentucky FRIED chicken, how the hell do we spin this one?” – but it’s a step in the right direction. I haven’t check the nutrition on it yet, so they might be injected with gravy and lard. Grilled > fried. Every time.
Taco Bell Fiesta Taco Salad
“Check under the beans,” says the allegedly attractive girl (I don’t see it) to the dude trying to find the lettuce in his “salad” in the new Taco Bell commercial for the Fiesta Taco Salad. What drives me nuts is that it seems like this country has given up completely on even TRYING to be remotely healthy. Polishing off one these salads of sorrow will fill your stomach with this conglomeration of chaos (alliteration ftw!): 845 calories, 45 grams of fat, 11 grams of saturated fat, 1.5 grams of trans fat (suck!), 1780 mg of sodium and 80 grams of carbs. Trans fat is the worst thing for you, and this has 1.5 grams of the stuff. Taco Bell has never been known for healthy choices. However, I think this one takes the cake in that they call it a salad, and then make fun of the fact that it’s so unhealthy for you that it’s just “technically a salad.” Cue the Bud Light “Giant Taco Salad Inventor” commercial:
Now, you take any of these three meals and add in a side item of fries, breadsticks, a coke, etc. and you’re looking at a really cheap way to kill yourself slowly. With everybody feeling the pinch from the economy being in the gutter, these fast food companies will continue to produce the cheapest, unhealthiest option and wave it in front of your face with multimillion dollar marketing campaigns. It makes me sad watching these commercials, because I know the people buying this crap will ultimately end up in the hospital with heart problems and it will be my tax dollars paying for it.
Just say no people! Friends don’t let friends eat this stuff.
-Steve
