The Best & Worst Fast-Food Salads—Ranked
Everyone wants to be able to say that they’re trying to eat healthier when they opt for a bowl of lettuce at a sit-down restaurant or make one at home instead of boxed mac and cheese for the night. For the most part, fast-food salads can indeed be healthy, but that’s with the right base and right toppings. So we went on the hunt for the best fast-food salad out there.
When eating out, you have no idea what exactly is going on top of your greens and how much sugar you could be consuming, especially at fast-food spots. Without examining how healthy the ingredients are and assuming just because it’s green that it’s good, you could be eating something that is more unhealthy for you than a fast-food burger. Dressings are loaded with sugar, and the toppings of your favorite go-to can add to your sugary demise.
Sarah Garone, an NDTR, health writer, and blogger for A Love Letter To Food, let us know her thoughts on the worst salads you can get at fast-food spots.
We applaud the fast food industry for trying to put out something that will let you enjoy your favorite fast food spots with a little more green, but there are some you just shouldn’t attempt to go near.
“I found it interesting that many restaurant websites list nutrients only in numbers, without the percentages you would normally find on a nutrition label,” says Garone, about each salad’s nutrition information.
So why would that be a problem? “The average consumer doesn’t necessarily know what they’re looking at without the context of percentages. While there’s no official daily value for sugar, the USDA recommends limiting consumption to 50 grams per day,” she says.
With this in mind, we based our best and worst salad picks based on the number of calories, then by the sugar content. If there were two salads with the same amount of calories, we broke it down in sugar to make sure you stay as far as possible from our worst picks and easily find the best options.
And while you’re thinking about fast food, here are 20 Ways to Cut 200 Calories From Your Fast Food Order.
