Not all salads are created equal, so to help you make healthier salad choices at the fast food joints, I created a nutritional comparison of chicken or turkey based salads offered at the fast food restaurants: Arbys, Burger King, Carl'sJr, Jack in the Box, McDonalds, Subway, and Wendys. I included sodium in the chart because fast foods are known to be high in sodium, and the salad offerings are no exception as you can see. The bulk of the sodium in some of the salads appears to come from the meat.
As far as meats go, I didn't include any of the beef, or taco salads because when people are trying to eat healthy at a fast food place the tendency is to go with chicken, as well the taco salads tend to be very high in calories and sodium. A couple of the salads on the list have bacon along with chicken. All of the chains also offer non-meat versions of each of these salads. This salad nutrition information also does not include salad dressings.
To drop some of the calories on the higher caloric salads:
- Eliminate croutons or crispy won tons and noodles
- Order grilled chicken over crispy chicken
- Eliminate or cut in half any cheese
- Eliminate or cut in half any egg yolks like in Chef Salad
- Go light on the dressing or order light dressing
[Salad pic is Wendy's Mandarin Chicken Salad]
