How to Compare the Nutrition of Fast Food Restaurants

Fast food restaurants are required to provide nutritional information on the food they sell to customers. It's easy enough to read this information off your placemat, when you're eating the burger -- but it's wiser to do a nutritional comparison of various restaurants beforehand, to learn which restaurant will best serve your dietary needs.

Instructions

• 1

  Obtain nutritional charts from several fast food restaurants. You can do this by visiting the restaurants and requesting copies. Alternatively, you can go to the restaurant websites and look up the nutritional information there.

• 2

  Study the information, but make sure that each restaurant is using the same units of measurement. For example, comparing ounces with grams won't be very productive. Also, look at the serving size when you're comparing items. A large order of french fries at one restaurant might be comparable to a medium order of fries at another restaurant.

  Choose items that are roughly the same size, and of similar content. If you don't compare similar items from restaurants, you'll be comparing apples to oranges, and the data you gather isn't likely to help you evaluate which food items are the better choice for you.

• 3

  Compare the calories, sodium, carbohydrates and fat in items. Look further by comparing the amounts of saturated and unsaturated fats each item contains. Also, pay attention to slight differences in comparable items. For example, one restaurant might use rolls that contain higher amounts of fiber than other restaurants do. If the comparable items contain roughly the same amount of calories, fat and sodium, then the item with more dietary fiber is probably the better choice.