If you typically get breakfast from a drive-thru, it’s time to get to know your breakfast sandwich. With January swiftly progressing, many of your neighbors and friends have already abandoned their New Year’s resolutions. By taking the time to gain knowledge so that you can create a lifestyle to support the changes you want to make, you’ll be way ahead of them in the long run.
In the past couple of weeks we’ve looked at the calorie and nutrition content of breakfast foods most commonly consumed at home. About 10% of American breakfast eaters grab a drive-thru breakfast sandwich, so let’s examine a few of those.
The typical breakfast sandwich is a combination of bacon, egg, and cheese or sausage, egg, and cheese. It comes served on some kind of bread: an English muffin, toast, waffle, biscuit, or doughnut. It is not normally gluten-free.
The best-known of the breakfast sandwiches is the Egg McMuffin®.
Egg McMuffin
McDonald’s signature breakfast sandwich is made with egg, Canadian bacon, and cheese on an English muffin. This sandwich has 290 calories. It also contains 17 grams of protein, 12 grams of fat, 235 mg cholesterol, 840 mg sodium, 3 g sugars and a total of 29 g carbohydrates in addition to 30% of the Daily Value of calcium, 15% of iron, 10% of vitamin A, and 2% of vitamin C.
While cholesterol may no longer have a recommended limit, the American Heart Association suggests a goal of 300 mg per day. 235 mg is a significant portion of that amount. The 840 mg of sodium provide 30% of the recommended sodium for a day.
Dunkin’ Donuts Belgian Waffle Breakfast Sandwich
For me, the pull of this sandwich is the waffle. I love waffles! Of course, I won’t ever choose to eat this sandwich because I must be gluten-free or be itchy, in pain, and weak. That doesn’t keep it from looking like a delicious choice. Let’s see how it stacks up nutritionally.
Dunkin’ Donuts’ puts egg, cheese, and bacon between two Belgian waffles. The waffle sandwich has 420 calories, 16 grams of protein, 27 grams of fat, 190 mg cholesterol, 800 grams of sodium,
14 grams of sugar, and 38 g total carbs.
It seems the waffle adds a significant amount of sugar and carbs. There are other sandwich carriers at Dunkin’ Donuts – bagels, biscuits, croissants, English muffins, and multigrain flatbread. There are also other fillers like the vegetables and egg whites.
If you choose a Veggie egg white omelet on multigrain flatbread, you’ll get 320 calories, 17 grams of protein, 13 grams of fat, 30 mg cholesterol, 610 mg sodium, 3 sugars and 33 total carbohydrates.
That’s more calories and slightly more fat and carbs than an Egg McMuffin, but with significantly less cholesterol and sodium.
Go big or go home!
Burger King Supreme Breakfast Sandwich
With this Burger King option, you get double egg, double sausage, and double bacon. I guess that’s what makes it supreme. The larger portions mean more calories. It has 880 calories, 41 grams of protein, 59 grams of fat, 375 mg cholesterol, 2170 mg sodium, 7 grams of sugar and a total of 45 grams of carbohydrates. In addition, this sandwich provides 15% of the Daily Value of calcium, 25% of iron, 4% of vitamin A, and 2% of vitamin C.
This is the highest calorie, highest fat, highest carb breakfast food we’ve explored. Not only does it have lots of fat, some of it is trans fat. Trans fats are created using an industrial process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid. Many doctors believe this is the worst type of fat you can eat.
With this sandwich, you’re getting a full day’s worth of sodium, almost a full day’s worth of protein, and close to half of a day’s needed calories. Most of us won’t work off those extra calories or cut back on salt the rest of the day.
Remember that we’re gathering information in order to put together a health plan that we can sustain throughout our lives. When you review your desired lifestyle, health goals, priorities, and budget, you may decide that one of these sandwiches is a good fit for your plan.
Given this information, I’m going to choose to go home for breakfast!
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us.html
https://www.dunkindonuts.com/dunkindonuts/en.html
https://ods.od.nih.gov/Health_Information/Dietary_Reference_Intakes.aspx
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
