Carl's Jr. Salt-Bomb Wins Vote for Most Disgusting New Fast Food

Driving home from our son's wedding in Northern California last weekend, we were hoping to find fast, healthy food offerings near the freeway. Foolishly hoping, it seems. 

Healthy options were scarce, and limited to sugary yogurts and a few sandwiches on whole grain bread (Starbucks), and several carb-and-salt-heavy 6-inch subs loaded with fresh-like veggies (Subway). 

Culinary weapons-of-human-destruction were easy to spot, though, at all the usual fast-food suspects... and were garishly hawked by Taco Bell, Jack-in-the-Box, McDonald's, and Carl's Jr, among others.

We voted Carl's, Jr's brand-new (introduced on October 22) Double Loaded Omelet Biscuit our most disgusting fast-food sighting of this road trip.  And for good reason... 

Brad Haley, chief marketing officer for Carl’s Jr., boasted "The new Double Loaded Omelet Biscuit, packed with three different breakfast meats... We make them fresh every morning by folding crumbled sausage, chopped bacon, diced ham and shredded Jack and cheddar cheeses into an egg omelet. Then we stack two of them inside one of our signature Made from Scratch Biscuits that we make by hand and bake fresh every morning. That great combination of eggs, sausage, bacon, ham and cheese – times two – will be sure to fill you up in the morning in an absolutely delicious way.”

Mr. Haley failed to mention the 1,960 mg of sodium (salt) in one of these drippy concoctions. That's equal to the salt in 15 small orders of McDonald's fries.  Equal to the salt in 9 servings of Doritos Nacho Cheese tortilla chips. 

He also failed to mention the 820 calories (equal to 4 two-packs of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups)  and 58 grams of fat (equal to 2 Big Macs) found in Carl's Jr.'s oozing Double Loaded Omelet Biscuit.  

And, of course, he failed to mention more than 100 chemicals, emulsifiers, additives, fillers, and artificial flavors and colors included as ingredients in this salty-fatty food bomb. 

Clearly, and by a wide margin, Carl's Jr.'s fevered bid to build and proudly sell an astonishingly unhealthy breakfast product wins our vote for the most disgusting fast-food last week along Highway 101.  

My question continues to be... why the heck does our government allow this and similar addictive, poisonous fake foods to be sold to hook the American public into ruining their health?   

Why does our government, which is tasked to protect Americans, allow mega-corporations to deliberately fatten and poison people in order to fatten corporate profits?

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U.S. Food Supply Ranked Subpar to Other Major Nations

Attention Congress and USDA/FDA leadership: the U.S. tumbled embarrassingly into 21st place in OxFam's worldwide ranking of 125 nations' healthy, plentiful food supplies and policies. 

Iceland, Australia, most western European and all Scandinavian countries all scored well above the United States, which barely edged out Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary, Israel, and New Zealand.  

Oxfam's in-depth survey, taken from October through December 2013, tallied data on food reality worldwide using four categories. The U.S. ranked admirably in two categories, average in one, but fared shamefully low in one... 

Afford to Eat, or the price and price volatility of food - U.S. ranked 1st  overall in  food affordability, mainly because food prices nationally are extremely stable and relatively inexpensive.

Food Quality, or the availability of clean water and nutritious foods - U.S. ranked 4th overall in this category, despite ranking a painful  41st in access to clean drinking water. 

Enough to Eat, or hunger within the country - U.S. ranked 35th overall among 125 nations. Although few U.S. children were underweight due to lack of food, many are malnourished. 

Unhealthy Eating, or frequent consumption of non-nutritious foods - U.S. ranked 120th among 125 nations, indicating that U.S. eating habits are causing obesity and diabetes among Americans. 

These shocking results shout that most Americans have access to both healthy and unhealthy foods, and are choosing unhealthy foods for both adults and children.

The U.S. is ranked the fattest and most diabetic nation among all major countries. The U.S. populace ranks as healthier only than Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Mexico, Fiji, and Jordan. in obesity and diabetes, two lethal health conditions.

Critics firmly believe that American health has plunged radically in recent decades due to the extreme prevalence in the food supply of fast and casual foods larded heavily with salt, fat, and sugar, and of industrial-manufactured "fake foods" riddled with salt, fat, sugar, chemicals, additives, fillers, and artificial flavors and colors.  

(Click here for "Salt Sugar Fat" - Stunning Big Food Tactics to Hook, Trick, Harm Americans.)

Why do Americans have extremely easy access (and thus, temptation) to unhealthy foods, especially when compared to the other 124 nations? 

One main reason: lack of political will in Washington D.C. to stand-up to corporate political donors and lobbyists in order to bring  the U.S. food supply up to international standards by mandating...

• Manufacturers to offer a higher percentage of food products with more nutritious and better quality ingredients
• Restaurants and fast food purveyors to eliminate and/or minimize purposely addictive levels of salt, fat, and sugar 
• Markets across the country to prominently display and emphasize a plethora of fresh, healthy products, rather than continue to exclusively push industrial-made chips, cookies, candy, ice creams, cereals, crackers, hot dogs, baked goods, frozen fare, etc, etc etc.

Congress, are you listening?  USDA and FDA leaders, are you there?  Are you working for the health of our nation, or for mega-corporate interests and your donors and political patrons?

Before answering that query, remember the warning of famed British historian and Oxford professor Arnold J. Toynbee (1889 - 1975) who observed and believed that the health of a nation is only as good as the health of its diet, and that a downward spiral in the quality of a nation's diet foretold a nation's cultural and political death spiral.

If unchecked, this U.S. tumble in Oxfam's data-driven survey of healthy diets around the world will be more than an embarrassment. This terrible tumble could be warning of a permanent downward spiral of our nation. 

Carl's Jr, Hardee's: Sex, Lusty Decadence with Salt, Sugar, Fat

Carl's Jr has finally abandoned all pretense of its former image of offering a panoply of heart-healthy (but quite delicious) fast food options.  

Instead, the 1,400-location western-states fast-food purveyor is gleefully appealing to the lustiest cravings of the I-don't-give-a-damn crowd.  (Carl's Jr also owns the 1,900-location Hardee's chain.) 

"Eat Like You Mean It!" crows Carl's newest round of TV ads, featuring gorgeous models seductively downing sloppy burgers the size of a small child's head. Or shaggy, shirtless surfer boy-men gazing at ocean waves while enjoying an oozing sandwich bigger than some beach balls.   

"All of our products are indulgent, decadent," commented Carl's Jr CEO Andy Puzder to the Los Angeles Times. 

Decadent, indeed! Check-out this remarkably lascivious 60-second fantasy commercial by barely clad super-model Kate Upton:



In case sex isn't enough to lure you to sabotage your health with their addictive calorie-and-cholesterol traps, Carl's Jr has upped the sugar, salt, and fat ante with greasier, tangier, sweeter menu offerings that must set new records of culinary extremism, even among industrial fake-food corporate giants. Among Carl's Jr's concoctions in 2013 are their... 

• Six-dollar Guacamole Bacon Burger (1,120 cal; 2,160 mg of salt; 81 grams of fat)
• Green Burrito Taco Salad (960 cal; 2,000 mg of salt; 60 grams of fat)
• "Low Carb" Breakfast Bowl (900 cal; 2,050 mg of salt; 73 grams of fat)
• Double Six-dollar Burger (1,522 cal; 2,574 mg of salt; 110 grams of fat)

If it's a sugar rush you crave, look no further than Carl's Jr's newest ode to the indulgent, anti-health-food agenda... the Strawberry Pop-Tart Ice Cream Sandwich, which the industrial mega-giant rolled out in commercials invoking sacred deities and featuring majestic classical music. 

With about 13 teaspoons of sugar (51 grams) comprising more than 200 of its supposedly 320 calories, Carl's Jr's Strawberry Pop-Tart Ice Cream Sandwich is truly for the I-don't-give-a-damn-about-diabetes crowd. Be decadent... order two! Live like you mean it!

As if to emphasize the special decadence of this attention-grabbing confection, Carl's Jr introduced it by advertising that "For a limited time, guests can receive a free Strawberry Pop-Tarts Ice Cream Sandwich with the purchase of a Super Bacon Cheeseburger combo at participating Carl's Jr. restaurants."    

The limited-time Super Bacon Cheeseburger features six juicy strips of bacon along with the usual high-calories, high-fat, high-salt fare. What the heck after all that! Why NOT add a Strawberry Pop-Tart Ice Cream Sandwich or two? 

Seriously... does it really matter after a certain decadent, indulgent point? 

I do vaguely remember Carl's Jr, though, when a large portion of their menu... mainly charbroiled chicken sandwiches and generously-stocked salad bars... featured heart-healthy symbols of the American Heart Association. 

Guess those fell by the fast-food wayside years ago, when Carl's Jr stopped giving a hoot about offering a plethora of genuinely healthy options to their customers....rather than only caring about gigantic profits at the expense of American public health. Or caring about you and your family's health. 

Subway's Chemical-Laced Sandwiches: Fooled by the Look, Taste of Freshness

Even diligent fake-food watchers can be fooled by the appearance and feel of freshness in corporate-prepared food. 

Take my favorite Subway sandwich, for instance: Subway's Sweet Onion Teriyaki sandwich. 

Filled to overflowing with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and other veggies, which are dressed with "our own fat-free sweet onion sauce." Topped (not as generously as shown above) with "tender teriyaki glazed chicken strips" that are not breaded. 

Subway's Sweet Onion Teriyaki sandwich boasts only 370 calories, and 6 grams of fat. More important to me, it tastes fresh, and has crunch and a pleasing sweetness.  I genuinely like it, and I like believing that I'm eating healthy, simple, straight-forward food that just happens to be served by the world's largest fast-food purveyor. 

Well, I feel duped. I've been fooled by the appearance of freshness, and lulled into thinking that the presence of veggies and chicken strips meant this was the rare fast-food that's largely free of industrial chemicals. 

Writes author Melanie Warner in her insightful new book "Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal" (click title to link to book):

"You probably don't think of your lunch as being constructed from powders, but consider the ingredients of a Subway Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sandwich. Of the 105 ingredients, 55 are dry, dusty substances that are added to the sandwich for a variety of reasons.

"The chicken contains thirteen: potassium chloride,  maltodextrin, autolyzed yeast extract, gum Arabic, salt, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, fructose, dextrose, thiamine hydrochloride, soy protein concentrate, modified potato starch, sodium phosphates. 

"The teriyaki glaze has twelve:  sodum benzoate, modified food starch, salt, sugar, acetic acid, maltodextrin, corn starch, spice, what, natural flavoring, garlic powder, yeast extract.

"In the fat-free sweet onion sauce,  you get another eight: sugar, corn starch, modified food starch, spices, salt, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, and calcium disodium EDTA.

"And finally, the Italian white bread has twenty-two:  wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, sugar yeast, wheat gluten, clacium carbonate, vitamin D2, salt, ammonium sulfate, calcium sulfate, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, potassium iodate, amylase, wheat protein isolate, sodium stearoyl lactylate, yeast extract, and natural flavors."

So much for simple and straightforward. So much for a sandwich largely free of industrial fake-food chemicals.  

Seduced by the easiness of ordering and enjoying complex food on a whim, I've opted to buy Subway's Sweet Onion Teriyaki sandwich rather than invest time in shopping and home cooking.   Ms. Warner is absolutely correct when she continues:

"If you were to make this sandwich at home with a basic  chicken breast and fresh bread made with minimal ingredients. it would contain only a handful of these things.

"Mass-scale food processing, however, requires an entirely different system of assembly, one fraught with often conflicting expectations. Manufactured food needs not only to taste good, for instance, but also to withstand the wear and tear of processing.  It has to look and taste exactly the same very time. It also has to have a long shelf life, be produced cheaply and efficiently, and on top of that, it would be nice of it could be marketed as healthy."

Eating heavily chemical-laced industrial foods is deemed to be far less healthy than consuming  homemade versions that greatly minimize chemical additives, fillers, emulsifiers, flavor boosters, and similar. 

Don't be fooled as I was: fast food is nearly always heavily laced with industrial chemicals. Even if it's touted as healthy.  Even if it looks, feels, smells, and tastes incredibly fresh.   

I'll never again look the same way at Subway's Sweet Onion Teriyaki sandwich. From now on to me, it'll be a delicious sandwich of 105 industrial ingredients, 55 of them dry, dusty powders.

No thanks!  I prefer my food sans as many industrial chemicals as possible. 

Dissecting Wendy's Baconator Burger at International Bacon Day

To mark International Bacon Day, September 18th, Wendy's exuded via email this week:

"Celebrate International Bacon Day with the spokescheeseburger for bacon, Wendy's Baconator. And to make things extra festive, Wendy's is kicking things off with our new collection of bacon-themed desktop, mobile and tablet wallpapers. Download one now!

"... check out the all-new Baconator fan page on Facebook. Who better to recognize bacon greatness than the Wendy's Baconator with its six strips of Applewood Smoked Bacon?"

Never one to miss a sacred, food-related holiday,  I thought I'd learn more about what one enthusiast dubbed "the tastiest sandwich known to man."   After all, the vibrant, healthy actors in Wendy's commercials make savoring the Baconator seem like a hoot-and-a-half to snack on (up to midnight!):



Ingredients of Wendy International's profitable pride and U.S. fast-food joy, the Baconator Double, are:

• Two quarter pound beef patties (seasoned with salt)
• Six slices of bacon (cured with  water, salt, sugar, sodium phosphates, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite)
• A "premium buttered, toasted" white bread bun 
• Two slices of American cheese (includes sodium citrate, salt, sodium phosphate, artificial color)
• Mayonnaise (includes high fructose corn syrup, distilled vinegar, salt, calcium disodium EDTA)
• Catsup (includes high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, salt)

The white-bread bun boasts a long, long list of chemical mystery ingredients. Optionals include the healthier stuff: tomato, lettuce, red onion, and crinkle-cut pickles (preserved in salt, vinegar, lactic acid, sodium benzoate, natural flavors, polysorbate 80). 

Nutritional count for Wendy's Baconator Double is:

• 970 calories (more than two deep-fried Twinkies)
• 570 calories from fat
• 210 mgs of cholestrol (equal to four cups of ice cream)
• 40 grams of carbs
• 2,020 mgs of sodium, which is salt (more than two large tubs of popcorn at Regal movie theaters) 

Hmmmm..... never mind! 

It's well-known that I love scrumptious food. And I love a celebration... any fun, life-affirming celebration.   But I'd also like to live a long, healthy life. 

Too many Baconators, and the only healthy result would be the fat corporate coffers of Wendy's International, Inc., parent company of Wendy's and Arby's, a modern industrial corporation that sold $3.4 billion of fast food in 2010. 

I think I'll mark International Bacon Day with a delicious strip or two of bacon on a salad, instead.

Fake Food Fears, Circa 1965: Sound Familiar?

"The multibillion-dollar refined-food industry has gained such power that it keeps people in ignorance and literally controls the health of our nation.  Its relentless radio, television, newspaper, and magazine advertising reaches like the life-crushing tentacles of an octopus into every home.

"Half the space in our beautiful markets is given to health-destroying products which fill shoppers' baskets to a frightening degree. Hundreds of magazines and newspapers, depending on advertising income from the foodless food industry, have carried articles and syndicated columns --- clever mixtures of truth, misinformation, and propaganda--- particularly designed to prevent the slightest interest in nutrition from interfering with enormous profits.

"The refined-food industry, by giving untold million, also controls a vast amount of nutritional research. Much of it is valuable, indeed, but information that might harm sales goes unreported and problems whose solutions could decrease profits remain uninvestigated...

KFC, Jack-in-Box, McDonald's: Legal Deception on "Healthy" Choices

We're livid when car dealers attempt to lure us with bait-and-switch scams. We speak our minds forcefully when we get suckered into any fraud, major or miniscule, be it from useless coupons or crummy products to services that don't deliver.

Sears was actually forced by the FTC, in 1974, to "cease and desist" using  deceptive tactics to draw customers into stores, then "switch their focus to products other than the advertised bargains." For the sake of sales and profits, of course. 

So why, then, do we allow fast food mega-corporations to deliberately fool us with the specter of fresh, healthy salads, when most of their mouth-watering "salad" concoctions are among the highest-calorie, saltiest, least healthy menu items? 

Make no mistake: their ruse is long-pondered, finely-plotted corporate-level sales strategy. 

Busy, beleaguered parents or grandparents of young kids are far more likely to order from McDonald's, Arby's Taco Bell, Jack-in-the-Box, KFC, and the like if they can order healthier for themselves. Or believe they are ordering healthier... The reality is jarring: