Fast Food Nutrition News

According to the calendar and the sunburn I'm sporting, it's still summer. But that hasn't stopped Starbucks from already bringing back everyone's favorite fall beverage, the Pumpkin Spice Latte. This year, the PSL is back with a new ingredient: Pumpkin. That's right, all those Pumpkin Spice Lattes you were guzzling in years past were really a cocktail of artificial ingredients that didn't contain any actual pumpkin.

Say "Hola!" to the KFC Double Down's Tex-Mex cousin, the Taco Bell Naked Chicken Taco. Just like the Double Down, the Naked Chicken Taco asks "why eat bread when you could be eating meat?" The KFC Double Down was a bacon and cheese sandwich that used two pieces of fried chicken as the bread. In a similar vein, the Naked Chicken Taco uses a fried chicken breast as the tortilla.

Everyday, millions of people find themselves in line at their favorite burrito or Asian restaurant, faced with a decision of colossal importance: white or brown rice? Ok, maybe it isn't THAT big of a decision, but in a world where we're all trying to eat a little healthier, choosing the right option for your rice can make a difference.

Fast food has a reputation for being unhealthy, and in a world of triple bacon cheeseburgers, it's easy to see why. However, as Americans seek to improve their diets, a growing number of healthy options are popping up on fast food menus around the country. Today we celebrate the best of the best, and award them the 2015 FastFoodNutrition.org Healthy Taste Award.

If you look at the ingredients in McDonald's grilled chicken, you'll see a lot of stuff that you likely don't stock in your home pantry. Maltodextrin coats the chicken to achieve even distribution of seasoning. Sodium phosphates are used to keep the chicken's texture from deteriorating during transport. Artificial flavors are present in the liquid margarine that the chicken is cooked in. Sounds just like mom's home cooking, right?

Today we mourn the loss of two Taco Bell menu items, the Sriracha Quesarito and the Waffle Taco. Ok, maybe we don't actually mourn the loss of these calorie-laden examples of pseudo-Mexican cuisine, but if people missed Chicken Fries, someone is bound to miss these items too.

For years, food companies have been making vegetable products that look like meat. But back in 2005, Burger King flipped the script by introducing chicken fries, which were quite possibly the first meat product made to look like a vegetable. Chicken fries were crispy pieces of fried chicken, with a french fry shape that made them perfect for dipping. After a 7 year run, Burger King discontinued Chicken Fries in 2012.