For lunch today, I wanted something different. I stopped of at Jack in the Box where their latest pitch is a burger made with 100% sirloin beef and offers you a choice of cheeses. Sure! That sounds better than plain old hamburger to me plus I get yummy swiss cheese instead of the normal yellow rubber stuff. I decided to give it a shot. As usual, I eschewed the combo and went for the sandwich alone. Fries are fattening and soft drinks are all sugar. Aw, what the heck. I threw in a side of onion rings (not health food, but better than fries).

My first clue that something was amiss was the fact that the paper bag I was handed looked like it came from Safeway. When I got back to the office and settled in with my big mug of water, I was pretty surprised at the size of the burger. It’s big! Really big. Bedaubed with some sort of special sauce, big pickle slices (cut longways) and bacon (didn’t mean to order that, but too late now). I dug in with nescient glee.

Even after taking off the top bun (which I always do), I could barely get my mouth over it. But I had to admit it was toothsome and lacked the drippy greasiness of most burgers. I made it through and soon after began to realize, that burger was just too big.

Hm. “Just how big was it,” I wondered. So I pulled up the Jack in the Box nutrition page. Holy heart attack Batman!!

(Before reading on, I recommend you refresh your memory on the recommended daily dosages of fat, sugar and salt in my original nutrition post.)

This monster (bun, special sauce and all) weighs in at nearly a pound. It’s crammed with a whopping 1120 calories (over half of my recommended 2000 per day) along with:

73 grams of fat (That’s well over the recommended 65g per day.)

2620 milligrams of salt (Again, more than my daily allowance of 2400mg.)

And this surprised me most of all. 11 grams of sugar (Almost half my daily allowance.)

Factor in the half order of onion rings I managed to eat and it looks like I’m having water for dinner. “Ohhh. I can’t believe I ate the whooole thing.”