Fast food salads

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Fast food salads

What's behind our fast food salad Ratings?

Experts at our National Testing and Research Center tested 6 models in fast food salads to see which ones perform best.

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Nutrition
Nutrition rating is based on values for calories per gram of food, total fat, saturated fat, sodium, and dietary fiber. Nutrition information is from websites and/or manufacturer.
Calories
Nutrition information is from websites and/or manufacturer.
Fat
Nutrition information is from websites and/or manufacturer.
Sodium
Nutrition information is from websites and/or manufacturer.
Fiber
Nutrition information is from websites and/or manufacturer.

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Fast food salad buying guide

You might feel virtuous when ordering salad as a main course at a chain restaurant, but if you use all the toppings and dressing provided, you could have been better off ordering a bacon cheeseburger.

That's what we found when we looked at the nutrition of 20 meal-size salads, with and without toppings, from eight major fast-food and casual restaurant chains, including Burger King, McDonald's, Olive Garden, On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina, Panera Bread, Sonic, and Wendy's. (For more information on and Ratings of fast-food eateries, read Four big names lose.)

Nutrition scores are based on calories, fat, sodium, and fiber. Some restaurants dole out as much as 4 tablespoons of dressing with a salad. For ranch, that could mean almost 300 calories, 30 grams of fat, and 500 milligrams of sodium (about 22 percent of the daily recommended limit).

The chart (available to subscribers) shows the nutrition of all the Very Good choices plus one Good alternative at each of several other chains. Five salads score Very Good for nutrition, but most do so only if undressed. Just one has Very Good nutrition with the dressing. It has about 300 calories and 3 grams of fat. But choose Chili's Quesadilla Explosion Salad and you'll consume 1,400 calories and 88 grams of fat.

Two tasters also tried some higher-scoring salads. The results: