Image credit: Wendy’s8 gut-busting fast food menu items your doctor wouldn’t approve ofOrder enough add-ons at a drive-through and you can eat a full day’s calories before lunch is technically over. Dietitians who track this keep pointing at the same trick: take a normal menu item, double it or stuff it, and sell the doubling as an upgrade.The specifics below are based on chain data anddietitian-reviewed rankings.Image credit: Wendy’sWendy’s Big Bacon Classic TriplePicture eating a full stick of butter’s worth of saturated fat and then some. That’s roughly the territory here, with trans fat aloneclearing double what health guidelines recommend for an entire day.Image credit: WikipediaWendy’s Pretzel BaconatorSodium is the real story here. A single sandwich accounts for 73 percent of a full day’s recommended limit, leaving almost no room for anything else eaten that day, including the fries sitting right next to it.Image credit: WikipediaBurger King Triple Whopper with mayoThree patties stacked under a heavy pour of mayonnaise. Simple description, less simple consequence: more than half a day’s calorie allowance in one sandwich, before anything gets added on the side.Image credit: Taco BellTaco Bell’s XXL Grilled Stuft BurritoIt fits in one hand. It doesn’t behave like it. Beef, rice, cheese, and sauce pack in nearly the entire day’s sodium limit into a single tortilla, which is an odd amount of sodium to fit into something a person can eat while driving.Image credit: RedditSonic’s SuperSONIC Bacon Double Cheeseburger with mayoEvery version of this burger clears 1,100 calories on its own, no exceptions across the lineup. This particular one adds mayo on top, and with it comes3.5 grams of trans fat, a nutrient most guidelines say to avoid rather than just limit.Image credit: Five GuysFive Guys Bacon CheeseburgerThirty major chains got compared side by side for their cheeseburgers. This one came out worst, by a wide margin, at980 calories and 1,050 milligrams of sodium.Image credit: Shake ShackShake Shack’s Shack StackA Shroom Burger sitting on an Angus beef cheeseburger. That’s the whole concept, and the nutrition numbers follow from it exactly the way you’d expect two burgers combined into one to add up.Image credit: McDonald’sMcDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese mealAdd the fries and a soda to this sandwich and the running total hits roughly2,000 calories. That’s not a snack. That’s most adults’ entire recommended daily intake, purchased in a single transaction that takes about 90 seconds at the window.Image credit: Jack in the BoxThe bottom lineNone of this is hidden, exactly. The numbers are available in the app for anyone curious enough to check before ordering. What’s actually shifted is how ordinary words like double, triple, and stuft have become, treated like flavor descriptors instead of what they actually are: a warning about portion size hiding in plain sight on the menu board.Ask us! What questions do you have about content, strategy, pop culture, lifestyle, wellness, history or more? We may use your question in an upcoming article! Ask us a questionRelated:Like MediaFeed’s content?Be sure to follow us. This article was syndicated by MediaFeed.co.
