Pic: Culture Jamming or Negative Advertising?

Perhaps a little bit of both. We ran across these posters in Midtown Manhattan on Friday courtesy of a chain of “healthy” fast food restaurants called the Energy Kitchen. Their own ads (which we admittedly dismissed at the time) flank these spoofs and carry the tag line – “Fast Food Doesn’t Have To Be Fat Food.” Upon arriving at the company website, visitors are greeted with the following information – “Nothing Over 500 Calories” – but as we’ve seen before, calories only tell part of the story. So how does it really stack up to the competition?

Sticking with breakfast sandwiches – bacon, egg and cheese –  as a point of reference, these are the results:

McDonald’s Egg McMuffin®: 300 Calories, 12 Grams of Fat  

Burger King CROISSAN’WICH® Bacon, Egg & Cheese: 340 Calories, 20 Grams of Fat

Energy Kitchen: The Energy Breakfast Sandwich: 365 Calories, 12 Grams of Fat

Curiously, Energy Kitchen doesn’t provide nearly as much detailed nutritional information as either of the two fast food giants and as we can see from this test at least, no matter how you package fast food, it still performs more or less the same. Although we have yet to do a side by side comparison of the sandwiches, if they’re all going to be equally good or bad for you – depending on your perspective – shouldn’t they at least taste that way? So for our money, we’ll take deep-fried and overly-processed over “grilled, baked or steamed” any day.