A Fast Food Dilemma

I've been a Chipotle fan for a while, mainly because it seems like some of the healthiest and freshest fast food out there. But recently, I looked at their nutritional guidelines to size up just what I was eating. I was shocked - shocked! - to discover how fatty my chicken burrito was. Below I compare two meals - the chicken burrito from Chipotle, against what I would've considered an insanely fattening meal - a double beef cheeseburger with medium fries at McDonalds (which either is or was Chipotle's parent company). See how they stack up.

Chipotle burrito: 41g of fat*

McDonalds meal: 42g of fat

* It breaks down like this: 9g of fat for the tortilla, 4g for the beans, 1g for tomato salsa, 1g for corn salsa, 7g for chicken, 9g for cheese, and 10g for sour cream. Even if you take out the cheese and sour cream from the burrito, the burrito still about the same amount of fat as the double beef cheeseburger without the fries.

Chipotle burrito: 16.5g of saturated fat

McDonalds meal: 13.5g of saturated fat < strong>

Chipotle burrito: 1110 calories

McDonalds meal: 820 calories (remember, this includes fries)

Chipotle burrito: 180mg/cholesterol (even without the sour cream and cheese, it's 110mg)

McDonalds meal: 80 mg/cholesterol (none in their fries)

Oh, and did I mention that if you add guacamole that you're adding 10g of fat, 1.5g of saturated fat and 140 calories (zero cholesterol, though) to that burrito? That would make a grand total of 51g of fat. McDonalds doesn't even have a sandwich that high in fat. The closest they come is the double quarter pounder with cheese... at 42g of fat. Add a hot caramel sundae at 8g of fat and you're STILL eating less fat than the chicken burrito with guacamole.

How can this be? I keep thinking I'm doing the math wrong, but I keep coming up with the same numbers. I know from my own experience that there's a lot to be said for eating the relatively fresh, real food they have at Chipotle versus the manufactured, processed stuff at McDonalds. When I eat at Chipotle, I can't even finish my burrito (at 41g of fat, thank God for that), and I feel full for a long time. But when I eat at McDonalds, which is extremely rare, I can almost feel my body collapsing in on itself, although eating at McDonalds is the guiltiest pleasure - so bad for you, but so satisfying in its own, culinarily dysfunctional way. But still, it's amazing to me that Chipotle is so well regarded and McDonalds is considered so evil.

Bring on the cheeseburger next time, because if I'm going to eat that kind of fat, I want to wallow in it.

Comments

[Brian]

Maybe Chipotle can change it's name to "Cheat Portly".