======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ====
Inhaling 1,000 or more calories in a single sit-down meal isn’t going to make you feel good. You’ll want to drop your driver’s seat down and take a nap in the comfort of your own car after eating most meals from fast food joints. Many a time I have sat in a fast food parking lot, feeling the shame and regret of downing $10 worth of processed garbage and deep fried, temporary happiness. Some places make you feel reenergized, but odds are, you’re going to feel like a huge piece of human garbage after eating at any fast food restaurant.
Let’s rank ’em, least shitty to most:
Chick-fil-A
Chick-fil-A makes me feel like I can conquer the world and make it a better place. A spicy deluxe with Chick-fil-A sauce on the side is my happy place. Also, waffle fries. Just high quality food right here, guys.
Subway
There are few more depressing places to eat lunch than at a Subway. Not only do you have to watch a 30-year-old getting paid $8.75 an hour make your sandwich, you have to mingle with unfortunates. I can’t sit down and eat inside of a Subway. This makes it the perfect food to bring back to the office. It shows people you are being sensible. Little do they know that it isn’t a 6-inch Fresh Fit meal, but rather a half eaten meatball sub that you ate half of in the parking lot, along with a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and a Dr. Pepper. You’ll still feel okay because you ate fresh.
McDonald’s
You can get a decent meal at Mickey D’s without feeling like a walking sewage dump. If I hit up the arches for lunch, I usually go with the Southwest Chicken Salad and a grilled honey mustard Snack Wrap. That’s just 600 calories right there. However, you might feel like you deserve a break today, so you power down a QPwC meal and a Coke. This will still leave you satisfied, because McDonald’s definitely puts addictive things called “petrochemicals” in its food, and you now crave them constantly since you have been engineered to want McDonald’s ever since your first Happy Meal.
Wendy’s
Dave Thomas was a good man, and nothing hits the spot like a JBC after a stressful morning. Unfortunately, the pure euphoria that you experience when eating Wendy’s is quickly replaced by despair and self-loathing. Of all the “okay” fast food places, Wendy’s has the quickest turnaround from “Man, that was good” to “I have diabetes.”
KFC
Now we’re getting into the real offenders. Putting away a Double Down or a KFC Bowl sounds appetizing when it’s 1 p.m. and you haven’t eaten anything other than a Nutri-grain bar, but once KFC’s “chicken” is in your system, you’re in deep. The shakes, indigestion, and general shame will plague you all afternoon.
Quiznos
A meal from Quiznos always ends with you cry-laughing after you come to the realization that you just paid money to eat at Quiznos.
Popeye’s
I love that chicken from Popeye’s. I used to eat lunch at Popeye’s every Wednesday at my old job–four chicken tenders with fries, a biscuit, and a drink for $4.99. That’s a helluva deal. What was even better was this left some money for a side. I usually went with red beans and rice, but every now and then, I’d load up with some mac and cheese, and my God. My afternoon was ruined.
Burger King
I think I was conditioned to love Burger King because I was in the Burger King Kids Club in the ’90s and got a free Whopper Jr. on my birthday. Well, I outgrew the Whopper Jr. and moved onto the Double Whopper, because I hated my life. You reap what you sow.
Taco Bell
I have a rule with Taco Bell. If I am 100 percent sober, I refuse to eat it. T-Bell is solely reserved for after 1 a.m., but sometimes you are out of options. Two Chalupas, two Doritos Locos Tacos, and a fried potato burrito thing later, I want to puke it all up and get my affairs in order. Yo quiero the sweet release of death.
Arby’s
Ha! Like I would ever eat at Arby’s. Even if I did (WHICH I HAVEN’T) I definitely wouldn’t curl up into a ball in my backseat of my car after eating a fast food reuben and curly fries from the Arby’s up by the airport.
Long John Silver’s
If you eat here, it’s either a Friday during Lent and you’re Catholic OR you really feel like punishing yourself. That “fish” you’re eating was probably pulled out of a 3-foot deep, 100-foot wide trough that it shared with thousands of other disgusting, genetically engineered, non-catalogued species of waterlife.
White Castle
It’s not real beef, those aren’t real onions, and that’s not real fecal matter that’s coming out of you two hours after mealtime.
Jack In The Box
Nothing will implode your endocrine system in upon itself like a meal from J-Box. Any place that sells not one but TWO tacos for less than a dollar isn’t using real anything in its food. I applaud Jack in the Box’s “Hey stoners, come eat here” marketing strategy, because the only way I would ever eat here is if I was “that one semester sophomore year of college when I only took nine hours” high.
Respond
Brian McGannon
What do I love? I love happy hour, a good golf tan, and getting moderately drunk during dinner.
@BrianMcGannon
@brianmcgannon
brianmcgannon
Sonic: This one is all over the place. You can get a Grilled Chicken Sandwich and some tots and not hate yourself, but if you go for a extra long chili cheese coney or allow the words “super sonic jalapeno cheeseburger” come out of your mouth, you better plan on working remotely from your toilet the next day.
It takes you two hours to unleash fury after eating White Castle? You have a stomach of steel sir.
Bojangles forever
Bojangles has saved my life many hungover Sunday mornings in college. And by mornings I mean 1pm. But when a place serves breakfast all day, it is always morning…
I would applaud the breadth of this article, except it has given me an intense craving for Popeye’s, and I wouldn’t even approach any of the Popeye’s in Dade County without a gun and a dog.
Taco John’s: Better than T-Bell, with potato oles.
^this guy!
TJ’s is so awesome. It sucks it’s basically only in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
What are you talking about? They’re all over the Midwest! Growing up, I had only seen Taco Bell on TV commercials (and that annoying little chihuahua). TJ’s reigns supreme over the Bell in the battle de wes-mex.
I just ate at a Kennedy’s Fried Chicken in Harlem and it was fucking glorious. Greasy, hot and I feel like I could fight a bear right now.
Though there was someone in there selling toothpaste straight out of a backpack. To the cashiers.
It may be reaching a bit but I don’t think that was toothpaste.
The one in LES is better
White Castle is the gracious gift from the north. All hail the crave case.
(1) Love that I’m not the only person that uses the JBC acronym.
(2) Why would you eat any of these burger options when Grandex is literally down the street from P. Terry’s AND Whataburger?!?
THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE OFFICE
AND Thundercloud… You people are animals.
I ate at Jack in the Box once….and never again. I’m pretty sure they use that stuff to clean you out before a colonoscopy.
…but the curly fries.
I can’t eat most of this stuff anymore. My senior year in college I had a moment of weakness and tried a chicken burger from McDs whilst hungover and promptly puked in the parking lot. So I guess you could say I felt great after.