A Shocking New Report Reveals the Most Unhealthy Fast-Food Meals at McDonald’s, Five Guys, and Popeyes

It seems like every year, a new study or documentary comes out ranking fast-food meals to uncover whether they’re good for you or not. A recently released report does just that, listing this popular burger chain as the worst place to grab a meal from. While these findings may seem daunting, you may want to take these discoveries with a grain of salt before jumping to conclusions or (God forbid) protesting your favorite restaurant.

The report in question — pulled together by Plushcare, a virtual platform for patients seeking services from medical professionals — combines the findings from reviewing the nutritional values of five classic fast-food items across 24 popular chains. 

The researchers explored the nutritional labels of cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches, nuggets, fries, and shakes. They examined the meals looking at four factors: amount of calories, sugar, saturated fat, and sodium. The report lists out some of the “unhealthiest” items coming from Five Guys, McDonald’s, Popeyes, and Fatburger.

Now, if you’re seeing one of your favorite fast-food spots on this list, don’t panic. While these findings may appear alarming, they don’t necessarily mean you should give them up.

The Kitchn spoke with Julie Duffy Dillon, a registered dietitian, to learn how the practice of mindful eating can help foster more accessible relationships with food. 

“Eating mindfully incorporates a compassionate take on making food choices based on what is accessible to you, how much hunger you are experiencing, and what will satisfy you,” Dillon says. “Eating mindfully is about meeting your physical and emotional needs,” she says.

The Kitchn also spoke with Carrie Dennett, a registered dietitian and the author of Healthy for Your Life: A Non-diet Approach to Optimal Well-Being and Jessie Shafer, a registered dietitian, to understand why it’s important to allow food to bring you joy.

“We make memories around foods that are special to us, whether it’s favorite holiday foods, the meal you always requested for your birthday as a kid, or that amazing dish you had on vacation,” Dennett says. “So while we want to nourish ourselves with ‘healthy’ foods, it’s also important for our overall well-being to include foods that bring us joy, even if objectively we know they aren’t contributing much nutrition-wise,” she says.

“[Mindful eating] means approaching food with a holistic thought process and experience, recognizing that food holds so many values for us as humans,” Shafer says. “It is nourishment, yes, but there are so many aspects and influences involved with what you eat and what you choose to eat at any moment, including social atmosphere, emotions, cultural beliefs, the need to be energized, price, accessibility, and more,” she says.

Framing certain foods as “bad” or “unhealthy” can make many meals inaccessible. “Whenever a food goes on the bad food list, it hurts all of us, especially those with less consistent access to food,” Dillon says. “I wish more people understood how important eating enough is for health, and that includes fast food,” she explains. 

With this in mind, fill your body with the foods that truly make you feel good, whether emotionally or physically. And if that just so happens to be a cheeseburger from Five Guys, then that’s okay.  “Current health food trends discouraging joyful eating neglects to understand how we humans are evolved emotional beings,” Dillon says. “Joyfully eating is healthy eating.”