On Healthy Living

I just read a story about the new Burger King breakfast offerings, and my heart hurts just thinking about people eating them.

The aptly-named Enormous Omelet Sandwich is made of two eggs, a sausage patty, three pieces of bacon and two slices of melted American cheese on a bun. If that sounds good to you, listen to this: it has 730 calories and 47 grams of fat. The new government guidelines on healthy eating for Americans do not give a standard calorie limit, but for most people it’s around 2,000 calories daily (you’d have 635 available each for lunch and dinner after this breakfast) but the guidelines do say to keep saturated fat to less than 10 percent of your total calorie intake (20 grams or less a day for a person eating a 2,000 calorie diet). As you can see from the full breakdown of nutrition information on the Enormous Omelet, this sandwich gives you 17 grams of saturated fat and 415 milligrams of cholesterol. The government recommends no more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol a day, which you’d have wiped out before noon eating this sandwich. Further, the government guidelines call for people to consume less than 2,300 milligrams of sodium daily, which you’d almost completely wipe out with this meal’s 1,860.

All of which is bad enough, but the really sad part is this breakfast item makes a Whopper look good, with “only” 700 calories and 42 grams of fat.

The other new option unveiled by BK is the Western Omelet Crossianwich, which looks like health food in comparison, with 320 calories and 17 grams of fat. This sandwich includes onions, ham, cheese and eggs served on a croissant roll. Leaving aside the fact that no one should eat onions for breakfast, this still probably isn’t the best choice you could make for eating on the run.

BK heralds these new offerings as giving patrons more choices for “convenient and filling” breakfasts. Yeah, they’ll be full, of calories, fat, protein and sodium, but empty of vegetables (unless onions count), fiber and, if they eat enough of them, health.

If you have to eat a fast food breakfast, go easy on the meat. The ideal breakfast will include A LITTLE fat and protein, and probably some dairy as well. It should be neither all protein (eggs and sausage) nor all carbohydrates (french toast sticks or hash browns). I don’t think there’s anything on the Burger King menu I would eat for breakfast by choice. If someone held a gun to my head and told me I had to eat a fast-food breakfast, I’d head to McDonald’s for the Fruit and Yogurt Parfait with Granola (technically a desert). At 160 calories and two grams of fat, if offers dairy, fruit, carbs and protein. It’s still not ideal, with a lot of sugar and no fiber, but it may be the best you can do on the run.

Best of all, if you know you’re not going to have time to eat breakfast before leaving the house, pack fresh fruit (or a light syrup fruit cup), yogurt and peanut butter crackers for a well-rounded meal that won’t break the bank or your waistline and will still get you to work on time.

Sarah White wrote this on March 28th, 2005 and filed it under Healthy Living, Healthy Eating, Health Foods |