No doubt you have probably seen the blog post about the Bacon Explosion, and you also probably thought, “holy crap, that has got to be the worst thing in the world to eat.” Well, yeah, it’s pretty bad.
But it’s not as bad as you might think. Of course there are articles all over the web touting this as a 5000 calorie food, but that’s if you ate all 4+ pounds of the thing. The nutritional content of a realistic portion (half a pound) may surprise you. Not only that, but there are many foods at restaurants that are worse than this.
I plugged the ingredients into the Heads Up Eating recipe feature, and created this food: Bacon Explosion
As you can see, it comes out to 878 calories, 60g fat, and 31g carbs for a good-sized half pound portion. That’s pretty bad, but not that bad if you compare it to, for instance,
- Bob Evans Caramel Banana Pecan Cream Stacked and Stuffed Hotcakes
- 1540 calories, 77 g fat (7g trans fat)
- Ruby Tuesday Bella Turkey Burger
- 1145 calories, 71g fat, 56g carbs
- Chili’s Awesome Blossom
- 2710 calories, 166g fat, 191g carbs (okay, that’s if you ate the whole thing, but imagine if you split it between two or three people)
- Macaroni Grill Double Macaroni ‘n’ Cheese (on the Kid’s menu, apparently)
- 1210 calories, 62g fat
(This nutritional information is according to the Men’s Health Article, “The 20 Worst Foods in America”).
Of course, I don’t recommend you go out and eat this, (but if you do, log it into Heads Up, it’s already in there, *wink*). However, it illustrates how easy it is to misjudge the nutritional content of food, albeit an extreme example.