Fast-food ingredients are heavy in fat, sodium and sugar, nutrients that can have harmful effects in excessive quantities. The high calories in fat and sugar promote weight gain, while fats themselves coat your arteries to block blood flow. High sodium content, which comes from seasoning salt, can push your blood pressure to dangerous levels. One unhealthy food won't tank your diet, but frequent unhealthy meals will. Discover the ill effects of combining fast foods that have the worst nutrition.
Double Hamburger and French Fries
A fast-food order of a double-patty hamburger and a large french fries gives you almost a full day's supply of total fat, which the Food and Drug Administration suggests limiting at 65 g. According to the USDA, much of the burger's 32 g of fat is saturated fat, which negatively affects your blood cholesterol level. The 28 g of fat in french fries may also have a large ratio of saturated content. Together, this burger and fries combo costs you 1,079 calories. Such a meal can easily push your daily count past the average diet's 2,000-calorie mark. The combined sodium content equals 50 percent of your daily allowance -- before you shake extra salt on your fries.
Biscuit Breakfast Sandwich and Hashed Browns
An egg and sausage biscuit sandwich delivers 37 g of total fat, with partial content of trans fat, a solid fat that also harms blood cholesterol balance. Adding 16 g of total fat from fried hashed brown potatoes only makes this combination worse for your diet. This meal adds up to 797 calories and 65 percent daily value, or DV, of sodium. The USDA suggests eating a nutrient-dense breakfast instead, or one that is high in vitamins, minerals and fiber and low in fat and calories.
Fried Chicken or Fish and Hot Apple Pie
Breaded and fried foods pose some of the worst nutritional combinations among fast foods, and of these, fried chicken or fried fish fillet sandwiches are the fattiest. One sandwich contains 29 g of fat, about one-third of it saturated. A fried fruit pie for dessert raises your DV of fat by 21 g. This seemingly healthy fruit dessert has 27 g of sugar, more than double the recommended 1 tbsp. serving, along with high sodium content. The sum of this meal equals up to 927 calories and 60 percent DV of sodium.
Milk Shakes and Cola Drinks
The sugar in sweetened beverages imparts calories but no other nutrition. If you don't work off those calories, your body will store them as fat. So every time you drink a 12-oz. cola, you need to expend 137 calories just to maintain your weight. Adding fat to a drink, such as the fat in milk and ice cream ingredients in milk shakes, exacerbates the calorie load, with as much as 493 calories per 16-oz. shake. The 33 g of sugar in a cola and 62 g of sugar in a milk shake can also adversely affect your blood sugar levels.
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