I'm Thinking Arby's

I guess I must be an idiot. When I heard the term Market Fresh sandwich, and saw that it contained lean turkey on what looked like multi grain wheat bread, I assumed that it would be a reasonable snack for the middle of the day.

But recently I've become interested in the content of my food, since it is rather hard to escape the fact that so many Americans are so fat. In fact since I've lived in the States I have gained a few pounds myself, and I wondered why.

Apart from the litany of horrific and should be illegal additives that are placed in our food, I've also noticed that most food here in America seems to contain enough sodium to kill a horse.

For the most part I have found I can combat these evil foods with organic products from my local organic supermarket. It is surprising how good organic food tastes, even without a ton of additives or salt.

But real life dictates that sometimes I have to eat 'normal' food. So the other day I took a trip to Arby's for lunch. I ate three items. A small beef and cheddar sandwich, some southwest egg rolls, and a market fresh turkey sandwich.

Now I am not an idiot, I didn't expect this to be particularly healthy, although I thought it would be a lot better than most fast food offerings in the area.

Turns out my meal, was the meal from hell. Upon checking the handy nutritional guide on Arby's web site, it seemed my meal was about as unhealthy as it gets.

This meal contained 2112 calories. 109g of fat, of which 31g was saturated fat, and 5.5g was trans fat. There was 265mg of cholesterol, 179g of carbs, and 163% of my RDI for Iron.

All not good, but the sodium content was what blew me away; 4911mg of sodium. Yep, more than double the recommended daily amount to be healthy.

Now I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting the egg rolls or the beef and cheddar sandwich to be healthy, but amazingly it was the turkey ranch sandwich that was the least healthy item there. Even less healthy than a white bun, stuffed with beef and melted fake processed cheese. This healthy looking market fresh sandwich contained 834 calories and 2258mg of sodium.

Of course silly me, I should have ordered the healthy wrap instead right? Well not really. Taking the wrap merely drops it to 699 calories, yet still a staggering 2215mg of sodium.

I can only assume that Arby's kills turkeys by dropping them into a boiling vat of salty fat.

Again I wasn't expecting food from Arby's to be especially healthy, but for me at least it was hard to believe that a market fresh turkey sandwich had double the sodium of a Big Mac from McDonald's. In fact, if I ate a Big Mac and THREE orders of LARGE fries from McDonald's I would still have consumed less sodium than a single market fresh sandwich from Arby's.

So why the rant? Apart from to announce I will never purchase food from Arby's again. Frankly I feel conned. When a restaurant shows me a 'healthy' wrap and talks about lean turkey meat and fresh ingredients being made to order. I expect that at least to be somewhat true. In all the times I ate at Arby's, I believed, thanks to their marketing, that I was not exactly eating healthy, but at least I wasn't eating those evil cheeseburgers from McDonald's. Lean turkey meat surely had to be so much better than beef dripping with fat right?

But apparently I was an idiot. In an effort to avoid the obviously bad for me, I seemed to have been led astray by a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Well so long Arby's and thanks for all the sodium. In my humble opinion when one single food item contains a day's supply of sodium, there should be a warning label right on the product: Warning, eating this will make you fat, give you high blood pressure, and ultimately kill you. This may look like a fairly reasonable sandwich, but you'd be better off with a cheeseburger and fries.