Countdown

On the eve of Fat Tuesday, I recall that a year ago, my Mardi Gras lunch was from Sonic. Because I knew it was "special." Fattening. Comfort food for the winter-weary.

Since that time, I have eaten too many lunches at Sonic. The floodgates are open, and it was a sunny day today and I'm not sick anymore, and so there I drove. . . .

Sonic, like Taco Bell, is very kind to tell you how much fat is in their food, via a nice .pdf on their Web site.

So, today, let's learn - really LEARN - that the grilled chicken sandwich costs 343 calories, 114 of them delicious fat. That's 13 grams of chicken lard, I guess. A bit comes from the doughy white bread, too, so, how about 10 grams of chicken fat? We all know it's tasty.

A bag of M&M's has 10 grams of fat, too, FYI.

If you choose the more exciting breaded/fried Sonic chicken sandwich, as you might as a Sumo wrestler or someone perhaps battling cancer's weight-loss, you would be getting 582 calories (209 are fat!). Like Jared of Subway fame says about McChicken sandwiches, this Sonic one has 23 grams of fat, the extra 10 coming, I guess, from the veggie oil and the extra carb-breading stuff. Oh, and mayonnaise, of course.

Good old mayo, adding extra eggs to your day any time, not just breakfast!

The surprise du jour is that onion rings, also breaded and fried, come out as 331 calories, 45 fat ones - but only have five grams of fat. That's the small order. There is no need for anyone to consume the large, which is over 500 calories of bread.

This is the only kind of math that makes sense to me, except for credit card interest and tax refunds. It's confusing enough that five baby grams of fat can actually be the sum total energy of 45 calories, but maybe they should focus on this "real life" stuff at school so people (like all the men I know) would have a clue about what meals really mean.

If you eat cows and not just chickens, then be excited that you can get your full day's supply of calories from just two SuperSonic Cheeseburgers! (This is "based on a 2,000-calorie diet," of course, and you must get the mayo - not the mustard - version to achieve the full benefits.) Thus you will be eating 132 grams of fat, so you won't have to buy too many of these kinds of "easy meals" before your heart stops working.