Heading to McDonald's to get your healthy salad fix? You might want to hold that off for now.
In their effort to win over health-conscious customers, the fast food giant has been incorporating healthy ingredients like quinoa, sprouts, kale, matcha, and green tea to its menu in Canada, US, New Zealand, and Japan.
But just how low in fat, sugar, and calories are these offerings?
Well, not that low really. The "I'm Greeking Out" salad bowl, which is served with baby kale, feta cheese, pita crisps, fresh red peppers, and sliced cucumbers, comes in at a whopping 280 calories and 12 grams of fat. According to FatSecret.com, a cup of Greek salad usually has about 106 calories and 7.28 grams of fat.
The blueberry pomegranate smoothie, available in the US, would seem like an obvious choice for health buffs over its soda counterpart. But you'll be surprised to know that the smoothie contains 260 calories and 54g of sugar. That's about five and a half Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts worth of sugar. On the other hand, a medium sized serving of Coke only has 170 calories and 42 grams of sugar.
Japan's matcha frappe has 297 calories and 14.2g of fat, just 4 calories lower than the McDonald's cheeseburger. The matcha latte isn't any better with 218 calories, while regular lattes only have about half of that amount.
Next up is New Zealand's "Zesty Guacamole Chicken Burger" that integrates avocado to its usual offering. Seems like a healthy choice? This burger has a staggering 24.1g of fat and 269 calories, 10 calories higher than six Chicken McNuggets which has 259 calories and 13 grams of fat
Even Toronto's McCafe, which serves meals prepared with quinoa and sprouts, has salads containing 270 calories.
But why do these seemingly healthy choices contain more fat, calories, and sugar than their normal counterparts?
Experts believe that this is because of the dressing used in the salads. A good example would be McDonald's Caesar salad. It contains 425 (!!) calories and 21.4 grams of fat. Compare that to a standard burger that only has about 253 calories and 7.7g of fat.
As of this writing, McDonald's still has not issued any comment.
