The 13 Most Irresponsible Fast Foods Available Today

No one, who isn't either insane or insanely stupid, thinks of fast food as "healthy." Granted, people have tried to sue fast food companies for making them fat, but those cases inevitably get thrown out because, really, if you are that out of touch, you probably belong in an institution. By and large, people know it is something that you should have on occasion when you are in a hurry, or as a treat. Most of us didn't need Super Size Me or Fast Food Nation to tell us fast food was bad for us; nothing with that much salt meat and cheese can be good for you. Killjoys like these seem to be sending a message to the Fast Food Industry saying "You are killing us!"

Based on my findings, the fast food industry's response is "Fuck you!"

But there are fast food joints out there that take this fact to a ridiculous extreme, producing foods that are almost immoral they are so bad for you. Do they all taste good? Would that I had the means to try all of them and give you first-hand results (wink-wink, nudge-nudge to any film makers out there, I will be your guinea pig). I happen to love fast food in all of its fat and sodium riddled glory.

I hold no illusions that it is anything other than a fast track to cardiac arrest and obesity, but I am half a step away from being an addict. Here is a rundown of what you SHOULD be putting into your body, based on the USRDA (information is from http://www.netrition.com/rdi_page.html)

Nutrient Unit of Measure Daily Values

Total Fat grams (g) 65

Sodium milligrams (mg) 2400

This will give you a benchmark when you see how atrociously bad for you these foods are. Just to reiterate, this is what they recommend you ingest in an entire day, with 3 square meals and occasional snacking and drinking. Based on the below list, the conscientious folks at your local fast food joint want you to get all of your eating done for the day in one shot.

#13 KFC: Extra Crispy Thigh

In a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, there are 4 possible pieces:

Drumsticks: these are the parts that kids usually fight over both because they have a cool name and a convenient handle

Breasts: The breast is where people who actually want to get full go, it has the most meat, and for true KFC connoisseurs, the most skin.

Wings: Left overs. There is less meat in a KFC wing than a sheet of newspaper and more crunchy shit than the breast. They are for people who love fried battered food but don't want to be bothered with the food

Thighs: the thighs are the "everything else" pieces. They are barely identifiable dark meat that gets as much fat from the meat as they do from the fryer. Despite being one of the smaller pieces on average, they, ounce for ounce, are the most hideously bad for you piece of food from a place that has "Fried" in its damn name.

How does it measure up?

Calories: 370

Fat: 28g

Sodium: 850mg

Compared to some of the monstrosities listed further down, this isn't so bad. However, when one considers that no one ever just eats one of these things, and one equals a full third of your daily sodium intake and half your daily fat, it becomes readily apparent why it is on the list. Chicken parts travel in groups, and this one is looking for your heart with the intent to beat it into submission.

#12 McDonald's: Double Cheese Burger

For the last several years, these guys showed up as the first option on McDonald's "Dollar Value Menu". Why pay a buck '98 for two cheeseburgers when you can have the equivalent for half the cost? All you are losing is some bun and a pickle, and really, who cares? It's a pretty simple formula over at McDonald's, you have a bun, a piece of meat (despite what internet rumors would have you believe), a slice of cheese, some mulched up onions, a dollop of ketchup and a couple of pickle slices on a bun.

How bad could that be?

How does it measure up?

Calories: 440

Fat: 23g

Sodium: 1150mg

Pretty bad. You save a measly 5 grams of fat on the KFC thigh, and what do you get in return? More sodium which is arguably way worse for you) and more calories. How in hell it manages to have less fat but more calories is beyond me, its not even fried. I used to eat two of these at a time and wash them down with beer. It's a wonder my entire digestive tract didn't start a revolution on behalf of my circulatory system (Give them a rest you son of a bitch! We all need them!)

That was the soft stuff. From here on in we move into "regodamndiculousville", where the food is so unbelievably bad for you that if it was fed to prisoners of war, it would be banned by the Geneva Convention. I'm not kidding.

#11 Hardee's: Smoked Sausage Biscuit

I haven't been around a Hardee's since I was a kid, and even then I don't remember ever having eaten there. However, there is an excuse for future gastric bypass hovering around there for breakfast, and it is the Smoked Sausage Biscuit. I honestly wish I knew more about this, but it looks pretty standard. While most fast food places do their sausage in patty form, Hardee's decided to go the link route and split a Hillshire Farm smoked sausage in half and stick that sucker on a biscuit.

You can't go wrong with sausage and biscuits. Even if both are terrible, there is some law of nature that forces the two in concert to taste good. Stephen Hawking is working on a theory to explain it I think, and if not, he should.

How does it measure up?

Calories: 620

Fat: 46g

Sodium: 1637mg

You might be thinking "No shit? The sausage and biscuit beat the double cheese? But there is only one piece of meat (technically) and no cheese!" and if not, you should be. But that info comes from Hardee's own website, and why in Hell would they lie about those numbers unless they were somehow far, far worse.

There is one thing I think when I look at those numbers: that thing must taste like heaven on a biscuit.

#10 McDonald's: Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese

You'd think that since someone took the time to make an entire documentary out of them that McDonald's would have food appearing further down in the list, but alas, the worst thing they offer is the Double Quarter Pounder with cheese. Now, don't get me wrong; this thing is as likely as the previous 3 to clog your arteries and make you look like Sanju Bhagat if you eat it any more than once every 6 months, but it is a far cry from the Cloverfield-sized beasts that come after it.

It follows the same format as the Double Cheeseburger, only larger and with Sesame Seeds!

How does it measure up?

Calories: 740

Fat: 42g

Sodium: 1380mg

Frighteningly for me and my burger/beer binges, the DQPwC is only slightly worse for you than the double cheese. Sure it has almost twice the fat, but it is "only" 300 more calories for double the beef and only 200 more milligrams of sodium. As far as death burgers go, the double quarter pounder with cheese is a wuss.

#9 Arby's: Pecan Chicken Salad Sandwich

Nothing with "Chicken" or "Salad" in the title could be bad, could it? Oh wait, yeah it can. Really bad. Typically the "non-fried" chicken is the best thing on the menu for you, but not in Arby's Pecan Chicken Salad Sandwich. Here is the list of ingredients:

Grilled Chicken

Apples

Grapes

Celery

Toasted Pecans

Mayo

All served on Honey Wheat bread with green leaf lettuce. Ostensibly, this should be healthy. Mayo is always a little iffy, but overall, that is a pretty decent looking meal. Fruit and meat isn't really my thing, so it doesn't sound too appetizing to me, but damn, should it really be ranked after the double quarter pounder with cheese?

You bet your ass:

How does it measure up?

Calories: 769

Fat: 10g

Sodium: 1240mg

In internet lingo, WTF!? Okay, so it has less fat, but almost as much sodium and more calories? Jesus Christ on a cracker, what is the mayo made out of? I am thinking eggs, oil and the souls of un-baptized babies. I'm thinking of making my own "Super-Size Me" style documentary called "I ate something from Arby's". I mean really, when you think about "chicken salad", you typically think "healthy alternative", not "Worse option than a double cheeseburger".

#8 Hardee's: Big Chicken Fillet Sandwich

Okay, we are now past the freakishly unhealthy grilled chicken into territory where we at least know it will probably kill us. Again, I wish I lived near a Hardee's because this thing looks damn tasty. Fried chicken sandwiches are one of the rare foods where the advertised image looks a hell of a lot like the real thing.

This thing is a mammoth of chickendom; at 351 grams it is over three quarters of a pound. Holy. Shit. That is a lot of fried chicken. Sure it comes with tomato and lettuce, and sure there are sesame seeds and mayo, but sweet Jesus, that is enough chicken to kill someone if you dropped it on them from a tall building.

How does it measure up?

Calories: 800

Fat: 37g

Sodium: 1890mg

Finally, we are into "meal land" where a single sandwich will mean that you should really not anything for another 6 hours, not to mention enough sodium to take care of almost two thirds of your daily allowance. Make sure you drink a lot of water when you eat one. It will take care of your thirst, and has the added bonus of letting you actually watch yourself gain weight as you retain water on top of ingesting over half your daily intake of fat in one sitting.

#7 Arby's: Roast Turkey Ranch & Bacon Sandwich

Good God, what is it with these people and poultry? With the possible exception of the disease you can catch if it isn't prepared properly, poultry is widely regarded as way healthier for you than beef, and typically it is. By the looks of it though, fast food joints with possessive names are out to ruin that reputation, or use it to kill you.

A roast turkey sandwich is another innocuous sounding meal; even with ranch dressing and bacon, it still sounds more like an actual "salad" than anything bad for you. As you can probably tell by the progression of things so far, this thing is a smoky delicious Darth Vader in disguise. It really makes me wonder how many people order this kind of food thinking that they are doing the right thing, eating a turkey sandwich instead of a greasy cheesy burger. I can only imagine they die with a look of surprise when their hearts explode like a grenade in their chest.

How does it measure up?

Calories: 818

Fat: 11g

Sodium: 2146mg

Again, with poultry, as long as it isn't fried, the fat content isn't too high, especially white meat. But we couldn't let it drop too low, lest this thing no kill people, so they added ranch dressing and bacon to round things out. There is also almost 100% your daily sodium intake in there; so ingesting this sandwich will cause you to actually lower the moisture content in the air around you.

#6 Wendy's: Baconator

Even the advertising for this one has Dave Thomas' ghost lifting his middle finger and laughing evilly at your various bodily systems, vegans and vegetarians everywhere. The commercial brags that there is nothing remotely vegetable like on a Baconator. Hell, if they had figured out a way, even the bun would be meat. What it is: 6 strips of bacon, 2 quarter pound patties, two slices of cheese, mayo, ketchup and a barely audible cloud of circling demons, cackling at the raw death embodied by this sandwich.

Needless to say, the Baconator is a sublime eating experience.

How does it measure up?

Calories: 830

Fat: 51g

Sodium: 1880mg

Now we're talkin'! Nearly half your daily caloric intake?

Check!

Almost all of your daily fat intake?

Check!

Two thirds your sodium intake?

Check! By the way, if you happen to eat one of these with anything other than a LOT of water, you wind up anticipating a fate similar to John Hurt's in Alien, complete with the twitching.

#5 Arby's: Sausage Gravy Biscuit

Wow, gone are the names that even imply they may be healthy for you. This thing takes Hardee's Smoked Sausage biscuit out behind the barn and beats it senseless with a 2 by 4 covered in butter. Not happy to simply have a fatty biscuit with a mere sausage on it, Arby's goes a step further and covers it in a word that can increase your BMI just by reading it: Gravy.

And we aren't talking "Thanksgiving dinner, made from turkey" gravy; this is "made from sausage which is flavored fat with some meat added" gravy. Although, to be fair, once you see that stats, you may be convinced that this is, in reality, just a block of salt on a bun.

How does it measure up?

Calories: 961

Fat: 31g

Sodium: 3755mg

No, you didn't misread that. 3755 fucking milligrams of sodium. According to the USRDA, if you eat one of these at 8 in the morning, you can't have another ounce of sodium until after dinner the next day. Now, I don't support people suing companies for ingesting the crap they provide, but if you decided to sue Arby's for one of these nearly killing you, you might have a case.

Seriously, food like this should come with a warning label.

#4 Burger King: Quad Stacker

Were you beginning to think that maybe we forgot BK? Or maybe their "Flame Broiling" somehow produced a "healthier" burger than the fried or microwaved gems that come from their major competitors Wendy's and McDonald's? Nope. They just didn't have anything healthier that made the list.

The Quad Stacker is the King's way of telling you to go fuck yourself. They clearly don't care if you live to see the end of today, just eat this and die. It is FOUR pieces of beef, FOUR pieces of bacon and FOUR pieces of cheese. Plus stacker sauce and a bun, which after the previous list are really just ancillary things to make it a little more deadly, and slightly less messy.

How does it measure up?

Calories: 1010

Fat: 70g

Sodium: 1800mg

I am beginning to run out of expletives that can accurately convey the sheer awfulness of these things. I think I will just settle on a simple "Fuck" and be done with it. Half the calories, two thirds the sodium and 5 more grams of fat than you should eat in a day. Some people have these for lunch, and don't skip dinner.

#3 Jack in the Box: Sirloin Bacon and Cheeseburger

Finally, a fast food restaurant not named after somebody. If you remember the early 90s, Jack in the Box didn't just try killing people with over-the-top food; they also used bacteriological warfare in the form of E. coli. Needless to say, they would probably like to put that chapter behind them, and probably could if random assholes on the internet would drop it already.

Their offering to this list switches up the normal naming convention in cheeseburger circles. Rather than a cheeseburger that happens to have bacon, they wanted you to know that this was first and foremost a sirloin burger, and they stuck some bacon and cheese on it for good measure. This sandwich is 427 grams... that is 15.06 ounces. For all you non-eggheads out there, that is 1 ounce shy of a full fucking pound. At that size, this burger should be classified as its own species.

How does it measure up?

Calories: 1136

Fat: 70.5g

Sodium: 2215mg

It doesn't look too much worse than the quad stacker, does it? There is a major difference, though. The quad stacker has 4 pieces of beef, cheese and bacon. Jack in the box is 3 pieces of bacon, 1 piece of cheese and one god damn piece of beef. ONE. I suggest there may be a special breed of cow engineered by Jack in the Box for the express purpose of turning the human heart into an explosive device. Is JITB run by Al-Queda?

We may never know.

#2 Burger King: Triple Whopper with Cheese

Finally, a kill-burger that eschews bacon. Bacon is cheating in a way, being basically salted fat. However, BK's second entry cheats in its own right by combining 3 massive quarter pound pieces of beef in a single sandwich. Jack in the Box can do it with one, but BK is the fast food equivalent of a guy who drives a great big super wide truck but never does anything off road or for the construction business. That is to say, they over compensate for having a small penis.

How do I come up with that? Come on... look at all that meat they stack up. On second thought, maybe it's all just a big metaphor for homosexuality. Whatever the case, the Triple Whopper (with cheese) is stupidly bad for you.

How does it measure up?

Calories: 1240

Fat: 84g

Sodium: 1600mg

Another note about the 3 patties; odds are against any given triple whopper having all of its beef from one cow, meaning you could be dining on up to 3 separate animals in one shot. It is very likely that ordering one of these puts you on par with Hitler and Stalin in terms of acts of genocide. Enjoy the sesame seeds you Nazi.

#1 Hardee's: 2/3 Lb Monster Thickburger

Ok, for starters, you know things can't be good when the name sounds like a gay porn spin on the movie "Goodburger". Secondly, this thing is #1 on the list. Being in the same room with it is nearly as healthy as having bacon grease and butter, slightly heated so as to be liquid, injected directly into your bloodstream where it coagulates on contact, causing you to have a massive body-wide stroke which kills the people standing next to you as well.

Or maybe not, but there is a reason this thing made number one.

How does it measure up?

Calories: 1420

Fat: 108g

Sodium: 2770mg

I am speechless. Hardee's is very likely a front for Gozer worshippers who are trying to bring about the end of all times. Three quarters of your daily caloric intake, almost twice your fat, and just for the fun of it, almost 400 more milligrams of sodium than you should have in a day. If it weren't for the existence of the Sausage and Gravy Biscuit, this would be the single unhealthiest thing on earth aside from plutonium and being crushed under an aircraft carrier in a volcano.

I hope no one has interpreted this as some sort of underhanded PETA propaganda meant to make you feel guilty about eating crappy food. Quite the opposite; I say eat this crap and revel in its sheer audacity to flip the bird at God and nature's plan for your digestive tract. Just a few words of advice: eat this food with plenty of water, or, plenty off beer. With the beer, you don't get as well hydrated, but you care a lot less.

Make sure there is a hospital near by, or at least a phone. You never know when a piece of bacon might get lodged in a ventricle and you could die from that.

Remember this: Moderation is the key to everything. It's not like you can't eat this garbage, just not all the time. And if you do, then quite frankly, you are an idiot, and you should file a lawsuit against your brain.