Fast Food Restaurants & Nutrition Facts

Fast Food Nutrition Facts

Fast food is bad food. That's pretty much common knowledge these days. The majority of the fast 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. It's the kind of food you want to avoid eating.

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 fast food nutrition facts you need to make the better choice and avoid making the worst one. Enjoy...

French Fries (Large) Compared

Fast Food Restaurant	Type	Serving Size (g)	Calories	Total Fat (g)	Saturated Fat (g)	Trans Fat (g)	Carbs (g)	Sodium (mg)
McDonald's	Regular	170	570	30	6	8	70	330
Burger King	Regular	160	500	28	6	6	57	820
Burger King	Salt Not Added	160	500	28	6	6	57	530
Wendy's	Regular	Unknown	540	26	4	1	69	550
Arby's	Homestyle	213	566	37	7	1	82	1029
Arby's	Curly	198	631	37	7	1	73	1476
Hardee's	Regular	193	610	28	6	Unknown	78	370
Hardee's	Crispy Curls	153	480	23	6	Unknown	60	1190
A&W	Regular	156	430	18	4.5	5.5	61	640
A&W	Chili	170	370	16	4.5	6	49	780
A&W	Cheese	170	380	19	5	4	50	870
A&W	Chili Cheese	198	400	19	5	4	51	990
In-N-Out Burger**	Regular**	125**	400**	18**	5**	0**	54**	245**
Jack In The Box	Natural Cut	236	640	33	8	10	77	1180
Jack In The Box	Seasoned Curly	170	550	31	6	10	60	1200
White Castle	Regular	244	700	34	6	11	89	560
Sonic	Regular	98	280	11	2	0	42	135
Sonic	Cheese	125	380	19	7	0	44	600
Sonic	Chili/Cheese	186	450	25	9	0.5	48	610
Dairy Queen	Regular	280	730	33	6	5	100	1530
KFC*	Potato Wedges*	102*	260*	13*	2.5*	0*	33*	740*
Carl's Jr.	Regular	198	620	29	6	Unknown	80	380
Popeyes**	Regular**	88**	310**	17**	7**	1**	35**	660**
Del Taco	Regular	198	490	32	5	Unknown	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."

Hamburgers Compared

Fast Food Restaurant	Type	Serving Size (g)	Calories	Total Fat (g)	Saturated Fat (g)	Trans Fat (g)	Carbs (g)	Sodium (mg)
McDonald's	Regular	100	250	9	3.5	0.5	31	520
Burger King	Regular	121	290	12	4.5	0	30	560
Wendy's	Jr. Hamburger	Unknown	230	8	3	0	26	500
Hardee's	Regular	118	310	12	4	Unknown	36	560
Carl's Jr	Big Hamburger	209	470	17	6	Unknown	54	1060
Sonic	Jr. Burger	117	310	15	5	0.5	30	610
White Castle	Regular	58	140	7	2.5	0.5	14	210
Dairy Queen	Homestyle Burger	140	350	14	7	0.5	33	400
Jack in the Box	Regular	118	310	14	6	1	30	600
In-N-Out Burger	Regular	243	390	19	5	0	39	650

• Best: White Castle (regular) & Wendy's (Jr. Hamburger)
  This one should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever seen a White Castle hamburger. They are tiny. And, when it comes to making the least-bad fast food choice, tiny = good. Due to the below average serving size, all but one of its nutrition facts were the lowest in this comparison. The one that wasn't? Trans fat. You'd think with a burger that size they would be able to pull off 0 trans fat per serving. Apparently not. Wendy's Jr. Hamburger on the other hand does pull it off, and combined with being the second lowest in nearly all of the other nutrition facts, they certainly end up as one of the better basic fast food hamburgers.
• Worst: Carl's Jr (Big Hamburger)
  While the nutrition facts of each fast food restaurant's most basic hamburger were somewhat similar in some cases, the "Big Hamburger" from Carl's Jr is my pick for the worst in this comparison simply based on being the highest in calories and sodium.
• Notes: For this comparison I used each restaurant's most basic hamburger. If the restaurant did not have anything simply called "Hamburger," I went with their next most similar and comparable product instead. For Wendy's, I used their "Jr. Hamburger." For Carl's Jr, I used their "Big Hamburger." For Sonic I used their "Jr. Burger." And for Dairy Queen, I used their "Homestyle Burger."

Fastfood nutrition facts
Sandwicheshamburgers-compared.