10) KFC
Coming in at #10 with $4.5 billion in 2012 sales is Kentucky Fried Chicken. This restaurant isn’t necessarily known for being the healthiest out there. Deep fried chicken with the skin, mashed potatoes with gravy, and cole slaw, aren’t usually on the list for clean foods. This place can definitely shoot your total calories and fat up if you are not careful. This would definitely not be my first choice when stopping for fast food but after looking at its nutritional information, it’s not really as bad as I originally expected it to be.
| Item | Calories | Protein(g) | Fat(g) | Carbs(g) | Sugar(g) | Fiber(g) | Sodium(mg) | Adjusted Calories |
| Kentucky Grilled Chicken®- Breast | 220 | 40 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 730 | 223 |
| Corn on the Cob (3″) | 70 | 2 | 0.5 | 16 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 76.5 |
| Corn on the Cob (3″) | 70 | 2 | 0.5 | 16 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 76.5 |
| Mashed Potatoes without Gravy | 90 | 2 | 3 | 15 | 0 | 1 | 320 | 95 |
| Totals | 450 | 46 | 11 | 47 | 6 | 5 | 1050 | 471 |
| Macros | 39% | 21% | 40% |
For a restaurant that is known for their deep frying, I was surprised at how hard it was to find a healthy fat option. I tried looking at the salad dressings but there were only three on their list. Two of them were creamy dressings and the other was a lite Italian with only 0.5 grams of fat. That added a 530 more mg of sodium and I didn’t want to add even more sodium to the meal.
The Original Recipe chicken breast was an option as that had more fat and less protein, but I didn’t like the high sodium level for that one. It may be an option though if you are looking for a lower carb meal. That item had 36 grams of protein and 14 grams of fat, which is not that bad, but the sodium is listed as 1130mg.
The potato wedges were another thing I looked at because they had 290 calories, 15 grams of fat and 35 grams of carbs but the thing that kept it off my menu was the 810mg of sodium that came along with it.
I think in a pinch, this meal choice is not that bad. You can get some fat from another source later in the day to bring your fats up a bit more to even out your macros. I don’t really like the sodium content but that was to be expected with fast food. I tried to keep it as low as possible. The net carbs (total carbs minus the fiber) is at 42 grams, which is decent for a normal meal but is pretty high if cutting so this is one of those meals that you would need to adjust if you are looking to cut.
