TASTE: Here’s the Beef

I like to say that I regularly sacrifice my body for my work, but what I do is nothing compared to what director Morgan Spurlock did when he made the documentary Supersize Me, a hit at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Spurlock decided to eat three meals a day at McDonald's and document the results. He started out at 6 feet, 2 inches, and 185 pounds, and within a month, he had gained 20 pounds, developed toxicity in his liver, high cholesterol and a big problem with depression.

I'm not going after McDonald's, per se. That would be vaguely un-American. But many of Spurlock's symptoms were a result of the high sugar content found everywhere in the fast food industry, and by extension, a high-carbohydrate diet.

Because of increased popularity and public awareness with regard to the Atkins Diet, a growing obesity problem in America and other wealthy countries, and other factors, like profitability, (after all, how expensive can it be to sell a product at the same price with components missing), fast food chains have begun offering the option of low-carb versions of their items. Recently, I tried a few and offer the following report. Take my findings with a grain of salt, but not between two slices of bread.

Subway's two low-carb wraps, chicken-bacon ranch and Southwestern turkey, sell for $4.29 each, and boast under 8 and 11 grams of carbohydrates respectively. The difference between the two is probably the amount of sugar in the sauce Subway uses to create each one.

The chicken-bacon wrap is made with a buttermilk-based ranch dressing, the Southwestern turkey with a chipotle pepper sauce, which I'm guessing is higher in sugar. Both are tasty, anyway, despite a tortilla-like shell the esteemed editor of this publication refers to as tasting like "chewy burlap." And the sauces, for the record, are interchangeable. In fact, the friendly kids at Subway will make it any way you want, really: any sauce, any condiment.

Over at Einstein's Bagels, the chain is selling a low-carb, multi-grain bagel that advertises 18 grams of carbohydrates, an amount roughly equivalent to what you get in a Slim Fast bar. It isn't bad as bagels go. It has a grainy taste and a nice, chewy firmness, although the texture is more like packing material than bread.

I paid $3.21 for a Whopper low-carb style at Burger King: $1.99 for the base price, plus 40 cents twice for bacon and cheese, plus tax. From what I could deduce from the confusing nutritional info on a sheet near the front register, the bun contains 260 calories, so subtract that from the 710 it usually has, and it will be 450 if you don't eat one with cheese or bacon.

The taste wasn't bad, if you, like me, prefer a charred flavor to your meat. But the burger, served with a heap of salads and condiments in a Styrofoam dish, is a little insubstantial, so I went home and had a dish of leftover fried rice, not a recommended action for serious Atkins junkies.

Finally, there is the Six Dollar Burger at Carl's Jr., now available low-carb style with a huge variety of options. This basic burger is a whopping one-half pounder, and with all the trimmings, an amazing 1,000 calories, bun included. It isn't $6, incidentally, but rather $3.99. The marketing campaign implies that it is what you get for $6 or more at an upscale chain like Chili's, so hence the name. Nahhh!

Like In-N-Out below, Carl's just subtracts the bun and charges you the same price. What generosity! Next time I'm on a low-carb jag, I'm just going to order the damned thing normally and then throw away the bun myself. I don't want to reinforce the stupidity of anyone's marketing department, nor become a meaningless statistic of the fast food industry, neither.

The major burger joints have, of course, chimed in with their two cents. It was In-N-Out Burger that first jumped on the bandwagon, with its so-called Secret Menu, a list fans know about but which is not posted at the take-out or inside.

This California-based chain started doing a "protein burger," one wrapped in lettuce leaves instead of its celebrated sponge-dough bun, well in advance of the Atkins hysteria. This burger, with or without the bun, remains the industry standard in all key aspects: quality, taste and value.

An In-N-Out Double-Double, for instance, is two 100 percent beef patties, hand-leafed lettuce, sliced tomato, spread, two slices of American cheese, with or without onions, stacked high on a freshly baked bun. Have it protein style and it will have 520 calories instead of 670, and a minimum number of carbs. Products used in its making, further, are brought to the store fresh daily, never frozen; the meat never hits the grill until the burger is ordered; and the cost is under $3.

Subway, In-N-Out Burger, Einstein's Bagels and Carl's Jr. have multiple locations in Las Vegas and Henderson. Each company has a website with more information regarding nutrition and store locations.