by Kenneth Andrews

Created on: June 09, 2009   Last Updated: May 27, 2010

To prepare a piece on the healthiest fast food restaurant chains is almost as demanding as writing an article on the most charismatic economists. It probably is possible, but feels like an oxymoron. Fast food is, in general, not terribly healthy, with all the sugars and fats and salt and artificial ingredients we associate with the products. But does it have to be this way? Is it possible to combine the fast food values of rapid service, low costs and plastic chairs with nutritious wholesome food that won't make you feel as though you've betrayed your colon within ten minutes of eating it? Can we have our deep-fried saturated fat cake and eat it?

While it is possible to cook healthy food for yourself at home very cheaply, the sad fact is that unless the price of sheeps' eyelids and cows' willies rockets dramatically due to the global economic crisis, it is cheaper for restaurant chains to serve us up the unhealthy rubbish. And it is we, the consumers, who insist on those low prices. We are complicit in our own poisoning, and just so we have enough change from our meal to buy a newspaper on the way home. In other words, the answer is no, we can't have our cake and eat it.

Having ranted, it can be said that some chains are healthier than others, but there are certain caveats with most of these.

1) McDonalds. There never used to be anything healthy in McDonalds, you knew exactly what you were going to get. A choice from one of the six 'value' meals with fries, a drink and a McFlurry for dessert. Then Morgan Spurlock made his documentary Supersize Me, which centred around the 'surprising' revelation that eating three large McDonalds meals a day for a month would make you put on a lot of weight and feel a bit unwell.

Now, you can get pure orange juice, and fresh (well, quite fresh) baguette sandwiches. They serve mineral water. Some of the salad looks as though it might have once actually been growing in the ground. However, it's all just window dressing, and the chain has made little effort to adjust the staggering salt/fat content of its basic menu. Nutritional information on the calorie and fat content of their meals is now displayed in many McDonalds restaurants, but you rarely if ever see anyone even glance at these statistics, sadly. The fact remains though, that it is now possible to get a perfectly healthy meal at McDonalds, very cheaply.

2) Subway. An international fast food chain that consists of freshly-made sandwiches filled with quality

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