Been craving a takeout, but dreading the calories? Well, we’ve got just the thing for you…

For millions of people around the world, fast-food makes up a large portion of their weekly diet, and as takeaways become ever-more popular, our reliance on fast-food is continuing to grow. Although we know that fast foods offer cost-effective and convenient access to an unhealthy lifestyle, we understand that every now and then, takeouts are okay in moderation – just like all foods.

It’s no secret that fast-food has become one of the most popular choices in the country – findings published by Statista in 2018 revealed that more than a third (37.58%) of over 18-year-olds in America in 2016 were eating fast food 1-3 times a week, while this number dropped to 31.57% in 2018*.

So, in order to help people make a healthier decision when it comes to getting something on the go, or a home delivery, we’ve created a list of the healthiest fast-food chains in the United States.

To create this list we analyzed the menus of 20 of the top fast-food restaurant chains in America – and discovered that Little Caesars finished in the top spot, with an average meal calorie count of 304kcal. We got to this number by selecting ten meals from each of the restaurants, and then finding the average calorie count across all ten meals.

We also discovered that Pizza Hut was the unhealthiest takeout choice, with an average calorie count of nearly 2000kcal.

Starbucks finished second on the list, with an average calorie count of 320kcal, while Dairy Queen rounded off the top three, with 327kcal.

The 20 healthiest fast-food chains in the USA, and their average calorie count are:

When collating the list, our nutrition team selected ten meals from each restaurant’s menu, including five ‘customer favorites’, and another five at random. We then worked out the average calorie number across all ten meals to rank each fast-food chain on the list.

We also decided to look a little further into the ‘healthy fast-food’ topic, and interrogated Google Trends data from the past 12 months, which shows that the searches for ‘healthy takeout’, ‘healthy takeout near me’ and ‘healthy chinese takeout’ have increased over the past 12 months. Washington, Connecticut, and Massachusetts were the most interested sub-regions in the United States.

Findings published by the CDC in 2018 and reviewed in January 2023 revealed that nearly three quarters (73.6%) of Americans aged 20 and over were overweight or obese, while more than half (54.9%) of adolescents between the ages of 2-19 were classified as obese**.

Crystal Marcano, Nutrition Editor at HealthyBeat, said,

“For a lot of people we know that fast-food has become a big part of their weekly diet not just because it’s nice, but because it is also extremely convenient. So, to try and help people make an informed choice when selecting which restaurant to dine at, we decided to make a list ranking each of the country’s favorite takeouts – and the results were quite shocking.

“For me the biggest surprise was to see McDonalds in the top five, and healthier than Subway! Most people I think would agree that Subway seems the healthier choice, however McDonalds obviously has some lower calorie choices than you’d think!”

SOURCE

*https://www.statista.com/statistics/561297/us-average-fast-food-consumption-per-week/

**https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm