Crunching -- And Grilling -- The Numbers

Nate Silver's statistical superpowers are at times fascinating as he takes a look at, of all things, just how unhealthy the KFC Double Down really is.  From a calorie standpoint, the Double Down isn't as bad as, say, a Wendy's Triple Baconator.  But on a "crap per calorie" basis, the Double Down is only exceeded by...the grilled Double Down.

All of those products, however, contain more -- often substantially more -- calories than does the Double Down. They have lots (and lots and lots) of bad stuff, but some good stuff like protein, iron and fiber as well. Their calories aren't quite so empty, and they damned well ought to leave you full.

So suppose instead that we re-calibrate our metric by dividing by the number of calories that each sandwich contains. This alternate measure, which we'll call Double Downs per Calorie (DDPC), gets at the idea of how bad each product is for you on a bite-by-bite basis.



And here, things don't look very good at all for the Double Down, since for all that crap you're taking in, you're only getting about one-quarter of the calories that you need. On this basis, not only is the Double Down worse for you than any of the chicken products (Chick-Fil-A's Chargrilled Chicken Club, at 0.91 DDPCs, is the next-worst), but also all of the burgers as well -- even the Triple Baconator (0.98 DDPCs) and the infamous Thickburger (0.92 DDPCs). In fact, the only thing that beats than the Original Recipe Double Down is the supposedly healthier grilled Double Down (1.19 DDPCs), which is almost 20 percent worse for you than the signature version on a per-calorie basis.

Have a nice lunch today.  I know what I'm not going to be eating. Even a footlong Subway chicken sub is only half as bad for you...and that sounds pretty good to me about right now for lunch.


Food for thought, indeed.