While healthy choices at the drive-through and backyard barbecue exist, many fast foods and picnic foods are bad for your health. Heart disease and Type 2 diabetes are just two of the serious illnesses that can result from consuming too much cholesterol, saturated fat and sodium, or the weight gain that comes along with high-calorie foods that contain them. Your total fat intake indicates risk from both saturated fat and high calories from unsaturated fats. A handful of unhealthy foods deliver large amounts of all of those risky nutrients.
Barbecued Pork Ribs
Total fat and cholesterol contents of more than 33 percent daily values, or DVs, of those nutrients add to the fatty plaque buildup in your arteries, making spareribs a bad food for your heart. If the ribs are large or you eat too many of them, you may exceed the 337 calories in a 3-oz. serving suggested by the USDA. If you add another fatty food such as potato salad, you'll approach nearly three-quarters of your total daily allowance for fat and cholesterol.
Potato Salad
Homemade potato salad gets most of its calories from potatoes, eggs and mayonnaise. Separately, your diet can accommodate these items in limited quantities. Together, a 1-cup serving of potato salad totals 358 calories, over 33 percent DV of total fat and over 50 percent DV of cholesterol, as per the USDA. The bland mixture may utilize more than half of your daily allowance of sodium, which comes mainly from salt ingredients in food.
Double Hamburgers
Super-sizing fatty meats make fast food hamburgers doubly bad for you. The American Heart Association suggests avoiding double-patty burgers, which usually exceed a suggested 3-oz. beef serving. At 540 calories, the USDA notes that a large double hamburger delivers 40 percent DV of cholesterol and nearly 50 percent DV of total fat. Many people eat salty french fries or onion rings with one of these burgers, which is already high in salt.
Biscuit Sandwiches
Drive-through breakfast sandwiches made with biscuits have some of the highest levels of detrimental nutrients in a single serving among all foods, according to the USDA. A large biscuit sandwich with egg and sausage tips the scales at 562 calories and nearly 60 percent DV of total fat, some of which may be nonessential trans fatty acids that are considered to be extremely unhealthy. A biscuit sandwich has nearly 100 percent DV of cholesterol plus half your daily allotment of sodium.
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