The french fries wars... who's the fattiest of them all !

There is an interesting column by Sarah Fuss in Yahoo! Fresh Picks today (click here) which compares the french fries of various restaurant chains. I found the article very interesting. So here is an excerpt of the article:

Sarah compared these seven restaurants:
-Arby's Curly Fries
-Burger King's French Fries
-Carl's Jr.'s Natural-Cut Fries
-Dairy Queen's French Fries
-Jack in the Box's Natural Cut Fries
-McDonald's French Fries
-Wendy's French Fries

Calorie-wise:

The Best
Dairy Queen wins with 2.69 calories/gram
Jack in the Box is close behind with 2.71 calories/gram

The Worst
McDonald's it is, with 3.25 calories/gram (21% higher than DQ)

But there are other stats to look at...

Here's the zero trans fat team:
Burger King
Carl's Jr.
Dairy Queen
McDonald's
Wendy's

This one is the trans fattiest:
Jack in the Box

How about saturated fat?

The Best
Dairy Queen (0.018g saturated fat/gram of fries)

The Worst
Arby's (0.037g saturated fat/gram of fries)

Also remember that a good deal in dollars, doesn't translate to your diet, and a "large fries" means something different to everyone:

Large Fries Serving Sizes
McDonald's: 154g
Carl's Jr.: 184g
Wendy's: 184g
Dairy Queen: 186g
Arby's: 190g
Burger King: 194g
Jack in the Box: 236g

Here are my two cents on this topic:

• Each chain seems to have its own positioning in the fries space:

1. McDonald's: No trans-fat, high calories per serving but much smaller serving size
2. Jack in the Box: Low calories per serving but much larger serving size ...and oh the trans-fat
3. Arby's: Eat the fries and please don't look at the trans and saturated fats label :-(
4. DQ: Low calories and fats; medium-size servings

• The positioning is interesting and tells you a lot about how well McDonald's is targeted at the mass-market. With smaller serving size and higher calories per gram, McDonald's can offer the lowest price per calorie.
  

• The FDA specifies 70 grams as standard serving size for french fries (click here). By that measure, the Jack in the Box 'large fries' are good for a family of three !!

Given all this information, I think I'll be more thoughtful when I feel like ordering the large fries ;-)