While fast food restaurants have been offering an ever-changing array of salads to choose from, nutritionists are concerned the leafy meals have all the sodium and fatty calories found in burgers -- a complaint that the real-life Wendy took some heat over during a recent B.C. visit.
Among fast food chains, Wendy's BLT Cobb Salad stood out by having 650 calories and 46 grams of fat -- both totals topping those found in the chain's Dave's Hot N' Juicy single cheeseburger. To compare, Burger King's Tendergrill BLT Salad has 360 calories and 23 grams of fat and McDonalds' Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with Crispy Chicken has 430 calories and 21 grams of fat.
CTV News asked Wendy Thomas -- the woman who inspired the restaurant trademark –- about the high caloric and fat values during a visit to Kelowna. She no longer has the red pigtails, but she's still a big player in the company her father founded and owns dozens of franchises.
"When my dad started over 40 years ago, nutrition was always important," Thomas said.
Thomas agrees that the fast food business has a responsibility to provide nutritious food, but says it has to be tasty or Wendy's will have no role to play.
"We're always looking at ways to make our food taste really good. That's the most important ingredient," she said. "But you really don't want to come in here and have something that's low fat but tastes like cardboard. Why come, right?"
Nutritionist Brenda Davis said she was amazed by the nutritional content of Wendy's salads .
"The salad also has almost double the sodium and almost triple the cholesterol, which is really shocking," she said.
The salads do bring a lot more vitamins to the table than burgers, but Davis says they aren't helping consumers break their addiction to fat, sugar and salt.
"It's nice that people have that option. But I think people need to recognize that they are not going to walk into a fast food restaurant and actually get a healthy meal," Davis said.
To increase the healthiness of salads, Davis recommends going easy on the dressing and not being afraid to tailor your order.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Kent Molgat
