America's 10 Best Fast-Food Restaurants--- and Worst

[underpants]

To separate the commendable from the deplorable, we calculated the total number of calories per entrée. This gave us a snapshot of how each restaurant compared in average serving size—a key indicator of unhealthy portion distortion. Then we rewarded establishments with fruit and vegetable side-dish choices, as well as for providing whole-grain options. Finally, we penalized places for excessive amounts of trans fats and menus laden with gut-busting desserts. What we ended up with is the Eat This, Not That! Restaurant Report Card, which will show you how all of the nation's largest eating establishments stack up nutritionally.

Chick-fil-A: A-
Subway: A-
Jamba Juice: A-
Au Bon Pain: A-
Boston Market: B+
Cici's Pizza Buffet: B+
McDonald's: B+
Taco Bell: B+
Wendy's: B+

http://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100235019&page=1

America's Unhealthiest Restaurants

Baskin-Robbins: D+
Carl's Jr.: D+
Denny's: D+
Dairy Queen: D+
Ruby Tuesday: D+
Chili's: D
Uno Chicago Grill: D
Chevy's: D
On the Border: D-
Romano's Macaroni Grill: D-
Baja Fresh: D-
Applebee’s, IHOP, Outback, T.G.I. Friday's: F



http://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100235017

[NoPasaran]

1. Chick-Fil-A may be clean and healthy, but they don't serve margaritas.

[pstokely]

65. Don't bother going on Sunday

They're closed

[NoPasaran]

68. Unfortunately, so are the liquor stores

[csziggy]

74. Chick-Fil-A is the only public eating place I have ever gotten food poisoning from

So to see them at the top of the list is a shock! I guess it was just the local store...

[flvegan]

2. I wouldn't consider half of those bottom ranked to be "fast food"

Any place with waitstaff to whom you leave a tip, I'd be hard pressed to call fast food. They're chain restaurants, and I'm not questioning the "nutritional value" :eyes: of the study, but I think they're out of place.

[TwilightZone]

5. The article itself doesn't identify them as "fast food".

The "good" list does, but the "bad" list is ID'd as "America's Unhealthiest Restaurants" without the qualifier.

[iamjoy]

7. Yes, And I'd Like To Know

What are the best (or least bad for you) "casual dining" restaurants because that's really the category for Chili's, Applebees, etc.

[Sultana]

3. LOL, at those restaurants that got beat by McDonald's

But I love Carl's Jr

[babylonsister]

4. Outback? The horror! nt

[MurrayDelph]

75. Yeah, but if you read the article

they failed Outback because Outback refused to play.

[YOY]

6. No Sonic?

For shame...

[Last Stand]

8. You can have my Blizzard

when you pry it from my icy, cold grip.

[hlthe2b]

9. Only surprise to me is Baja Fresh....

They are gone from Denver, or at least the areas I frequent, but I seem to recall them having some fairly healthy options...:shrug:

[Codeine]

12. Enormous portions.

Seriously, Baja Fresh puts enough food in each serving to last a whole day.

[hlthe2b]

16. That's a plus for their salads, I think...

;)

[NeedleCast]

21. Had Baja Fresh for Lunch today

Vegetarian Burrito, enchillada style.

They have good a solid salsa bar too. One of my favoirte "alternative" fast food places. They have plenty of healthy options. Most of this article seems to be based on portion size and not the "health" of the food being served.

[FreeState]

34. Thats a lot of calories and fat: 1470 Calories - 76 GRAMS OF FAT

Grilled Veggie Burrito (970 cal/42 g fat/17 g fiber/114 g carbs) Weight Watchers Points 19.5
"Enchilado" Style (any burrito) (500 cal/34 g fat/5 g fiber/26 g carbs) Weight Watchers Points 12

Total fat: 76 grams
Total Calories: 1470
TOtal Fiber: 22grams


I have enjoyed this before - in fact its one of my favorites at Baja Fresh - I do not eat that there anymore.

(Im on WW and get 20 point a day, 22 if I work out - the total for this one meal is 32 points)

[NeedleCast]

38. Worth It!

[FreeState]

42. Its one of my favorite... but I save it for special days now... :) n/t

[NeedleCast]

45. About the Same

I hit Baja about three times a month, maybe sometimes more since it's a three block walk from my office.

Still, while it's high in calories they're not neccissarily bad calories. I assume the rice and tortilla wrapper make up the vast majority of the calories in the veggie version. I also get it without the sour cream, which I'm sure knocks down the fat and caloric content. I'm guessing that while it's not the healthiest thing to eat, it's gotta be better than say, a double-cheeseburger.

I couldn't do the weight watchers...too much math :)

[bumblebee1]

54. Baja Fresh?

Hubby and I always enjoyed eating at Baja Fresh when we were living in California.

[Bill McBlueState]

10. calories per entree

Obviously an ice cream store like Baskin Robbins is going to look horrible by that metric.

It's also a poor way to compare fast-food restaurants with casual dining restaurants.

[Kali]

11. who judges fast/junk food places by their healthfulness?

give me a break. If you want healthy make it yourself. Junk food serves a purpose, I sure don't eat it for health reasons - I mean really - does anyone?

[LynneSin]

13. Chick-fil-A is a fundie owned company and I won't patronize them

nuff said

[tabbycat31]

20. they do some good things though

the one near me does free flea markets in the summer/fall (I'm a jewelry designer and take advantage of these to sell some necklaces) and I appreciate that service to the community.

I only eat there when I'm doing the shows because they give me a coupon for a free meal, which I'm not going to turn down.

[Toucano]

56. Glad your values are worth only a few baubles and a free meal. n-t

[tabbycat31]

73. I'm making $$ off them

they allow me to set up a table in their parking lot and sell my necklaces free of charge. I can make a few hundred bucks from a good CFA show. Every other venue I've set up at charges a fee.

I have never given the company a dime of my money. I've taken advantage of the stuff that they've given me free.

I am not a Christian, keep that in mind. However as a flea market and craft fair vendor, you have to take advantage of the events that your area has to offer. I also go to a lot of church's craft fairs too. I'd love to go to the municipalities instead, but they're much more expensive (most churches charge under $20 for a table, municipalities over $100). Churches allow me to build a customer base that will allow me to eventually move up to the municipality level.

[Toucano]

77. Okay.

You're clean. :)

[tabbycat31]

78. just needed to clear my name

to be honest I don't like their chicken sandwich that much, but their fries are good.

Now keep posted cause if you're in NJ you better show up to buy some stuff off me :-)

[RavensChick]

46. Besides that,

Their chicken is too dry for me! I went once and that was enough for me!

[wickerwoman]

55. Yeah, me too.

The only time I went to Chick-Fil-A I could barely chew the chicken. It was like rubber. And their biscuits sucked.

Granted, I was a little annoyed because they replaced Popeyes, but the food I got there was literally inedible and I never went back.

[ddeclue]

61. All in all they treat their employees a hell of a lot better than McD, Wendy's and BK.

Yes they are "fundy" owned but they don't really try to shove it down anyone's throat.

[Lyric]

72. Like hell. They blare crappy Christian music in their stores,

they put Bible crap in their kids meals, their official company statement says that the business exists "to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A," and they pressure their employees to participate in group prayers--one Muslim man was fired when he refused to do it, and they settled out of court to shut him up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A#Religious_connections

They are a despicable company.

[ddeclue]

76. I've never seen that in many years of going there... McDonald's and WalMart are despicable.

I wouldn't call Chick Fil A that, just a little eccentric.

[tularetom]

14. Except for Subway all the "healthy" ones really suck

On the other hand, Macaroni Grill, Outback, and Chili's, mmmm.

But the best one of all Sonic isn't anywhere on the list.

Chick-fil-A :puke:

[cali]

19. ugh. Subway. plastic food. they all suck

none of those places serve real food. give me my local diner anyday. they serve local grass fed beef, homemade bread, real french fries and local produce.

[NeedleCast]

22. Great, now I'm craving Cherry-Limaide

[azmouse]

15. I save money and calories by not eating at any of them.

Interesting info though.

[thereismore]

17. Applebees only get an F because they do not publish nutritional information.

Steak, mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables. You know what you're getting, right?

[Goblinmonger]

28. Applebees seems interesting

but they have NOTHING for vegetarians. They don't even try.

[WhollyHeretic]

36. I had never been to one until a couple of years ago when my wife and I stopped in one

while traveling. Luckily we asked to see the menu before we sat down. We couldn't believe it when we saw they didn't have a single vegetarian option on the menu. :wtf:

[Goblinmonger]

39. They can do what they want

but I, obviously I guess, don't eat there. Though I don't understand why they don't even offer a couple options given their national reach.

[WhollyHeretic]

40. It's pretty easy to throw a veggie option on. It's not just vegetarians who would eat it

I just don't understand the logic of it. Especially for a family place. If you have groups of 4-8 people going to a diner there is a decent chance one person is a vegetarian. So by not offering a single vegetarian option they are losing the rest of the family as customers if there is a vegetarian in the family. It doesn't make sense for a national chain.

[blondeatlast]

48. Not only that, there is nothing at all healthy on the menu. Not a thing. We received gift cards

from them, took the kid thinking we'd at least find a semi-healthy fish entree on the menu.

Nope, nothing--and the food was simply, well, AWFUL.

[tridim]

18. Subway gets an A- ?

WTF ever. Subway sucks ass in every metric.

Where is Sonic on that list? How about Chipotle?

Yea, I know Chipotle is high in calories, but at least most of their ingredients are good for you.

[blue_onyx]

35. Yeah, I'm not a huge Subway fan either

I use to go there all the time but I started getting sick. I think it was the mayo...I tried it without mayo once and I was fine. Of the sandwich options, Panera Bread and Jimmy John's usually are my preferred options.

Why do people love Sonic so much? I was there once and it was ok. They just announced they'll be opening the fourth Michigan Sonic a few minutes from my house...maybe I'll give them a try again.

[GoneOffShore]

23. Au Bon Pain - Good bread - The other places I won't go in.

Supporters of corporate agribusiness and the enemies of small farmers.

[prolesunited]

24. What's fast food?

[dustbunnie]

25. These ratings exemplify the American tendency to not take responsibility for what we eat.

Restaurants were penalized for large portions and offering "gut busting" desserts. You don't have to stuff the entire plate into your gullet, and no one forces anyone to order cheesecake afterward. In a pinch, people can easily find something low in cals, sodium and fat at pretty much all those places. It's all about taking responsibility and making choices for oneself.

[wickerwoman]

58. Yeah, but Outback doesn't have a single option

which is remotely close to a single serving. Most of their steaks are three to four servings of meat dished up to customers as a single serving coupled with double portions of potatoes and veggies drenched in butter and salt. I was appalled at the size of restaurant servings coming back from Asia where the same amount of food would be served to three or four people. The plates in Asia and Europe are literally half the size of plates in America. No, you don't have to eat all of it, but if you eat in that restaurant you have to buy all of it and then you have to mentally re-portion it and then you have to plan how to get it back to a source of refrigeration before it goes off.

I'm on a diet where I'm trying to restrict myself to 500 calories a meal. Cooking for myself I can easily do a four food group satisfying meal for 300 calories and have 200 left over for dessert. My parents gave me a gift certificate to the Olive Garden so I went to their website to get nutritional information and they didn't have a single option under 700 calories (except on the kids menu and be damned if I was getting chicken nuggets). Almost all of their entrees are over 1000 calories. None of their options have an even remotely balanced veggie-meat-carb ratio... 95% were all meat and carbs. Granted, the sensible thing at that point is not to eat there at all, but this survey presupposes that you are going to eat in one of these places. Some of the meals served at Olive Garden are identical to things I cook at home. When I cook them they are 300-400 calories but when Olive Garden cooks them they are 1000-1200 calories. How does that happen?

Most of these restaurants are using massive amounts of salt, fat and preservatives to disguise the fact that the ingredients are not that fresh and they are being cooked by people who don't know how to cook. They include minimal vegetables because they are harder to stock year round and keep in the freezer until needed. It's laziness, cost-cutting and unwillingness to pay competent employees. 50% of homes in America don't have access to the internet (and therefore can't conveniently look up the nutritional information) and many people have absolutely no idea what a reasonable serving of food is because the food service industry has been increasing portion sizes gradually for decades and they've had "supersizing" marketing gimmicks shoved down their throat for years. The small coffee at Starbucks in America is bigger than the large coffee at Starbucks in Asia, for example. What normal working person has time to notice these things?

I'll take responsibility for what I eat when some of these restaurants take responsibility for what they serve (oversized, overseasoned, salty, sugary, GMO'd, fat-laden dreck) and stop pushing obscene portion sizes to improve their bottom lines.

[pinniped]

26. Where's Red Robin?

Their turkey burgers and freedumb fries are loaded with salt.

[dysfunctional press]

27. i've never even heard of chik-fil-a, let alone seen a restaurant...

my favorite fast-food meal would have to be the corned beef reuben at arby's.

[ddeclue]

62. Mostly in the Southeast US. Started in Atlanta. nt

[dysfunctional press]

66. their site showed some locations in illinois...but too far south to be considered habitable.

i insist on the kind of winter that keeps the worst insects and reptiles OUT.

[Mudoria]

29. I love Chick-Fil-A

time for a stop the next trip to town.

[burning rain]

81. I know you can get your sandwich the way you want it...

but that notion of putting pickles on a chicken sandwich is dumb. I love pickles, but they do NOT go with chicken.

[LiberalPersona]

30. Interesting

because Chick-fil-A was always one of my favorite places to eat when I was young. It saddened me when they shut down the closest restaurant they had to me, I really miss them.

[wuushew]

31. Why is Culvers not on the unhealthy list?

Their standard hamburger is the butter-burger. Noboby should feel like having a heart attack after eating a standard menu item.

Everything you order from that place turns the wrapping paper clear except the roast beef.

[dustbunnie]

33. Based on the calorie count, trans fat, sodium and portion size, it isn't as bad as the others.

You can get a burger @400 cals. Some of those places on the list don't offer anything under 1000 cals a plate.

[backscatter712]

32. When McDonalds, Wendy's and Taco Bell rate in the top ten, that doesn't bode well for our diets...

:puke:

[Stinky The Clown]

37. Chick-Fil-A Praise Jaybus!!!!!!

Look into the ownership and controlling interest ...... Fungelicals.

[callous taoboy]

50. Totally!

I worked there in high school and boss was always proselytizing. It sucked except when I got to take drugs and dress up like the chicken to give out free samples.

[cboy4]

41. I love the Jamba Juice

[Dukkha]

43. McDonalds? wow.

I guess that's the resulting change from decades of being the punching bag of the environmental and nutrition movements.

Outback an F? They can have my Bloomin' Onion from my cold dead hands!

[NeedleCast]

49. A lot of this is based on "bad science"

It's based pretty much on portion size. It assumes that if you go into an Outback you're going to have that 16 oz steak, a stack of mashed potatoes and a slice of garlic cheese bread the size of your face, plus appetizer. If you eat a whole lot of almost anything, its going to be bad for you. McDonalds in moderation, Outback Steakhouse in moderation...both perfectly reasonable dietary choices. Eating a double quarter pounder, biggie sized fries and a bucket of Cola isn't good for you no matter how good McDonald's grade is.

[ddeclue]

63. There's no way I buy this study...there have to be a lot of caviats

to any study which says the McArches is a good place to eat.

[NeedleCast]

70. It's the way the comparison is done

Because you can't exactly stack McDieties up against Ruby Tuesday or Outback in a heads-up menu-to-menu contest. I don't think McDieties is neccessarily a bad place to eat as long as it's done in moderation, just like most things (and the fact that I don't like their food very much). I'm sure that if you go to Outback four times a week and wreck a 16oz steak, mashed 'taters and vegetables covered in butter and oil and toss back a couple of 32oz Miller Lites that you're going to end up a train wreck pretty quick as well. The "study" isn't studying that though, they're taking the worst of many of these bar-n-grill chains and putting it up against a normal meal at a fast food join and that's a bullshit comparison.

If you go to Outback and order a normal type dinner...say an 8 or 10 ounce steak, a side salad and even a heavy starch that you're still in pretty good nutritional shape where as if you head for Micky-Ds and have a Big Mack, Super-Sized fries, apple pie and wash it down with a bucket of Coke you're going to pay the price pretty quick.

[ColbertWatcher]

44. Where is EL Pollo Loco? n/t

[tjwash]

47. Yeesh...everything on that list all the way down is gross-ass swill.

Taco bell? Mcdonalds? Wendy's?

At the top?

:puke:

Are you sure this isn't the list that they accidentally sorted by MSN advertising revenue? Taco bell gets a B? They are by FAR the nastiest of all of them. A coworker of mine was chowing down on crap from them, and the grease was literally pooling on his napkin, and made the whole damn thing transparent by the time he was finished.

Good god, I'm so glad I pack my own lunches.

[Spike89]

51. Useful I suppose but flawed

The obvious flaw is that some restaurants can be penalized for having a choice (desserts) and others get a bonus for other choices and the more varied the menu, the worse you're likely to do. Nobody forces you to eat the Blizzard at Dairy Queen (or stops you from hitting DQ on the way home from Chick-fil-A. It's much easier to go into an Outback, Applebee's etc. and choose healthy choices than it is to assemble a truly healthy meal at Wendy's or Taco Bell. Besides, for the most part fast food portions are designed primarily as lunch meals and obviously the sit down places are mostly dinner...or did the study use the lunch menus at the sit down places?

[orleans]

52. well, that was fun--clicking links and reading the articles

no mention of jack in the box (they're not around here, but how i loved those super tacos!), burger king, arbys. maybe they got graded with C's so they didn't make the top ten in bests or worsts.

[damntexdem]

53. Looking at the lists, I give the ratings a D-.

Having dessert choices is a minus for them -- but that is user-optional.

Or, if user-optional issues are negatives, how about buffet style places like Cici's? Average serving sizes are irrelevant when one can load up -- that is, if user-optional features are to be counted against a place.

And "supersize me" McDonalds gets a B+? Please!

[geegollygosh]

57. The portions are bigger at the 'unhealthy' set though...

I personally am going to eat less for the rest of the day if I eat a huge meal than if I eat a cheeseburger and fries. Or I'll take part of the big meal home. and I always hate these things that judge healthfulness of restaurants by calories alone. That's not the whole picture.

[elleng]

59. If I'm in Chicago I'm going to UNO's, and

I don't care what you say!!!

PS, they have (had?) a GREAT salad!

[ddeclue]

60. Surely they got those restaurants backwards...

There's no way eating at McArches is better for you than Macaroni Grill or Applebee's, or TGIF. There's no way it should be in the top of the list.

:crazy:

and how did Sonic and Burger King not make the list of worst?

[BlooInBloo]

64. Heart attack grill didn't make it?

http://www.heartattackgrill.com/

[DainBramaged]

67. Are you sure this isn't an April Fool's joke?

My beautiful Daughter is the bartender (bartendriss?)at a local Chili's, and I eat there (at a discount) and I do not understand how they could be less healthful than Mickey D's.


I call bullshit.

[ellie]

69. I love On The Border!

[Lyric]

71. Chick-Fil-A's innate fundie craziness and the constant Christian music

playing on the store speakers count for about 10,000 calories in my book. When I found out who owns that company and what they support, I stopped going there and will never, ever go back. Besides, their chicken is effing nasty--the breading is sweet, which is disgusting.

[burning rain]

80. I didn't know that about Chick-Fil-A's affiliations.

I just knew that their way of dressing a chicken sandwich was stupid and their food did nothing for me.

[burning rain]

79. You want a seriously good burger and fries, go to Five Guys.

^