Fast food and calorie counts

Glamour Magazine has a cool little regular feature called "You can have this....... or all this." The first panel shows a main course food item with maybe a side dish or two. The second panel shows a similar main course food item with some lower-cal tweaks, at least twice as many side dishes, and usually a dessert thrown in. The calorie counts of the two panels are identical. It's very interesting. Sometimes it's surprising where the real calorie load lies, and what small things you can tweak to get a big payoff in terms of fewer calories.

http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2011/07/calorie-math

I'm not an obsessive calorie-counter, and I don't want to be... but I think it's a good thing to have a decent working concept of what you're eating and what easy, painless substitution options you have to make it a little better.

Topic: fast food.

A McDonalds' Angus mushroom and swiss burger has 770 calories. Just deal with that concept for a minute. (A different website puts it at 820.)

Now, in my defense, I don't eat a large amount of fast food- and when I do, I most often get a grilled chicken sandwich sans mayo, which is one of the lesser evils. Also, I frequently get JUST the sandwich, skipping the fries and sugary soda which usually double the calories of your meal.

When I splurge with a McDonald's Angus mushroom swiss, I ask for no mayo, and *always* cut the burger in half to stretch it into two meals. Even so: an Angus burger meal (with fries and soda) using only half the burger is still 1045 calories. Zow. That is most of the *daily* recommeded calorie count for a person my size.

A regular McDonalds' cheeseburger all by itself (which fills me up, honestly) is 320 calories. So is an Arby's regular roast beef.

A McDonalds' grilled chicken (skip the mayo) is 300. Get it crispy, and it shoots up to 500.

A quarter pounder with cheese meal is 1190 calories. A cheeseburger Happy Meal (which fills me up) is half of that: 550 calories. And you still get your french fry fix.

Grilled chicken clubs, which are some of my faves: Mcdonalds' GCC is 594 calories. If I go to Jack In the Box instead, a GCC is a slightly more rightous 530. (Danger Point: At Jack In the Box, though, there is the irresistable chocolate shake: 660 calories for a small.)