The first food I investigated was the BK Veggie. All the information I am pulling for this post is accurate as of December 23, 2005. I used this pdf available here from Burger King itself.

I’m starting with the BK Veggie because it’s supposed to be a healthier option. It’s a vegetarian option, but I believe no fast food restuarant will guarantee anything to be 100% vegetarian. It definitely isn’t vegan.

Let’s start of by comparing calories with the flagship Burger King product, the Whopper. The default Whopper order has 670 calories. The BK Veggie has 420 calories. If you add cheese, the Whopper now has 760 calories, and the BK Veggie has 470 calories. The Whopper actually adds two slices of cheese because…well, I’m not sure why. You can shave 80 calories off the BK Veggie by holding the mayo. The Whopper actually has 160 calories dedicated to just mayo!

So the healthiest way to eat a BK Veggie would be to hold the mayo and cheese. That gives us a reasonable looking 340 calories per sandwich. Now we want to look at fat, and the mayo becomes important. Without the mayo the BK Veggie has 8 grams of fat and 70 calories that come from fat, which would make this a 21% fat product. Actually, that’s pretty good. That would be a reasonable meal. Most people would keep the mayo however. That brings that sandwich up to 16 grams of fat and 150 calories from fat, meaning the product is now at 36% fat. At most you should have fat make up 30% of your calories. So the default BK Veggie is too fatty. Throw in the fact that most BK Veggies are sold with fries, and well, why even bother? For comparison, a Whopper has 350 calories from fat, a whopping (pun intended) 52% of its total calories. Insane.

In conclusion, a BK Veggie gets a middling grade from me. If you have just a BK Veggie, no cheese or mayo, it’s not a wholy unhealthy option. Even two BK Veggies for dinner wouldn’t be bad for you. In reality, though, most people get a soda and fries with it, which pretty much voids any benefits you would gain. A lot of people eat fast food while they’re traveling, and in airports, I don’t know that this would be available there. You’d be better off just packing a bag of carrots.