Sonics Chicago dog and fries still a good deal!

Forsyth MO - Grabbing a fast food meal that won't kill a diet can be a bit tricky. But, at only 690 calories, the Chicago styled hotdog at Sonic's along with an order of French fries ain't all that bad! Over the years, I've found the quality of fare at this venue to be of the best of quality, and so I make it a conscious decision to forgo burger joints like McDonald's.

And, while McDonald's will set you back almost $7 for a Big Mac and medium fry, my Sonic fare came in at only $4.85! That's a major savings, in my book, at marginally better nutrition.My only gripe about the meal is the sodium content of the dog. At 2300 milligrams, it's way over the top!

It's time for a Chicago Dog!

While I've never made Sonics a regular on my list of places to eat, I do like to make a trip to the one located in Forsyth, Missouri about once a month to get myself a genuine Chicago Hotdog! At 690 calories for a hotdog and an order of small fries, this type of fast food is on my list of no-no's from a diet standpoint! That said, a meal of this type every once in a while can't hurt. And, the taste is soooo good!

The hotdog itself is 236 grams while the French fries come in at about 88 grams. And true you are getting hit will a load of saturated fats, especially when you tack a small order of fries onto the meal! The villain, so we've long been told, has long been saturated fat. Conventional wisdom, which dates to the 1950s, is that saturated fat, which is present in meat, dairy, and some plant products, increases our total cholesterol and chance for heart disease and stroke. Trans fat, a relative newcomer that dominated packaged goods and fast food, is another bad guy: It not only ups our LDL cholesterol but also lowers our HDL cholesterol (the kind that helps sweep bad cholesterol out of the body). The American Heart Association recommends limiting your intake of saturated fat to less than 7 percent of your total calories (if you eat 2,000 calories a day, that's 16 grams, roughly the amount in a chocolate milk shake) and of trans fats to no more than two grams a day.

After decades of bashing saturated fat, the medical community was stunned by a 2010 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In a research analysis, scientists discovered that there wasn't enough proof to link saturated fat to either heart disease or stroke. It wasn't the first time this fat had been vindicated: Four years earlier the Women's Health Initiative study found that eating less saturated fat didn't result in lower rates of heart disease or stroke. The 2010 analysis, however, was so big and so thorough — involving 21 studies and nearly 350,000 people — that it grabbed experts' attention. "Everyone had just assumed that the evidence against saturated fat was strong," says study author Ronald Krauss, MD, a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, who was surprised by the finding and the controversy it created. "We had to work hard to get our study published. There was an intrinsic mistrust of this kind of result."

Researchers say there were even earlier clues that saturated fat didn't deserve its reputation as top dietary villain. The decades-old "diet-heart hypothesis" — the idea that saturated fat is bad for the heart — was mostly based on animal studies and short-term trials that looked only at people's cholesterol levels, not at whether they actually had heart attacks. "Those studies are great for making hypotheses but not for making widespread recommendations," says Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and a researcher of diet and heart health. "When we started getting evidence from longer trials and observations, we realized that the truth is more nuanced than we thought." The bottom line, for me, is to keep all foods I eat in moderation with an emphasis on vegetables and whole fruits!

Take a pass on this Sonic offering!

I received a small flyer in the mail advertising a Saint Patrick's Day special on their cheeseburger at HALF PRICE! Wow! I thought, I can't miss out on this deal and headed over to the local Sonic eatery at noontime on Saint Patties Day – I did this deed while bypassing an authentic corned beef and cabbage meal being offered at a local bar!

Truthfully, this was a good deal in terms of cost, as I purchased the cheeseburger and a small order of dries for only $3.03 including taxes! (No drink needed as I always bring one with me). However, I

The Cholesterol and salt were also thru the roof!

was not as happy when I considered that this meal is really lousy from a nutritional standpoint. That's my view. (You be the judge by inspecting the nutritional label at right). And to add insult to injury the hamburger was not as it was pictured in flyer – not even close!

Bottom line, don't waste your time on this loser! Score it a 2 on a scale of 10!

Fast food, Sonic's Chicago Dog and all that extra trash!

For under four bucks there's not much that beats eating a Chicago Dog and fries from Sonics in my little town of Forsyth, Missouri. Eating one of these takes me back many years to when I lived and worked in a suburb of Chicago. I can still remember having to wait in a line for my food at one of those roadside joints that used to spring up in and around the Industrial Park where I worked. You'd get this little tray that barely was big enough to hold the dog and fries at the same time. And those fries, they were always limp and sprinkled with some kind of red pepper that gave them a special taste all their own! Back then, I would scarf both down in just a minute or so during my lunch break and would get back to work. That little tray and a napkin would be unceremoniously dumped into a waste can and forgotten.

Back in those days nobody really ever talked about recycling. Trash was trash and that was that! We had landfill space a plenty and the throw away society was just getting cranked up. I do remember that about the only thing that was recycled was those coke bottles that you could redeem for a couple of cents each. But, even those quickly disappeared when aluminum cans were introduced. Then plastic came into vogue and the dumping party was in full swing! Now, as I stare at the remains of my meal. This pile of trash that weighs about 66 grams. I'm once again reminded of a growing problem.

It's trash! These days, many of us still toss out an awful lot of solid waste (about 73%) which ends up in landfills situated all across the country. But, most of us will readily admit that the writing is now on the wall. even though there is still plenty of space left, it's still just a matter of time before recycling will become the law of the land, and not just a good idea. Also, it's worth noting that nothing we use is infinite in supply. Aluminum, steel, tin, glass, plastics and even paper are now routinely used and then reused again and again. Did you know that aluminum can be recycled at just 5% the cost of making it from raw ore? That's also true, to some extent, for just about anything made of metal, glass or plastic. So, if you're all for saving energy, this is one way to help!

Update: The cost of this meal went up almost 13% as of June 2012. What cost $3.76 is now $4.30!