20 Fast Foods With the Most Calories

Published: January 8, 2024 by Colman Andrews

We all know that most fast-food options aren’t particularly healthy. In order to make them taste good to us (i.e., in order to make us crave them and buy them as often as possible), chain restaurant chefs and food scientists concoct the optimum arrangement of elements including fat, sodium, and sugar (even sometimes in savory items) — along the way frequently adding serious calories to even the healthiest-sounding options.

Food service industry analysts estimate that at least 30% of us in this country (children included) eat fast food at least once a day, and most Americans choose it between one and three times a week. While an increasing number of fast food establishments offer lighter variations on their menu items, it’s still pretty hard to limit caloric intake while patronizing such places. (Can you guess the identity of the most popular fast food chain in every state?)

According to the National Institutes of Health, the optimum daily calorie intake in order to maintain one’s current weight is 2000 for women, 2500 for men, or 1500 for women and 2000 for men for those who wish to lose a pound a week. (Men generally need more calories to function well because their metabolisms are faster.)

The unlikelihood of keeping to those numbers on a fast food diet is brought home by the realization that a single item on many chain menus can account for half or more of the recommended daily maximum. In order to determine the food offering with the highest calorie count on the menu at 20 of the nation’s most popular fast-food chains, 24/7 consulted official nutrition charts on each chain’s website.

We chose the largest size of each item where a choice was given, but did not consider desserts or beverages — some of which soar into the caloric stratosphere. We also considered only single items, without the side dishes that usually accompany them (like fries with a burger) or optional add-ons (like bacon or extra cheese), and filtered out family-size items, like 10-piece chicken baskets..

We did not include pizza chains in our calculations, but be forewarned that a typical small (10″) pepperoni pizza can account for around 1500 calories all by itself.

The highest-calorie item on the menus at a dozen of these 20 places exceeds 1,000 calories — and in one case provides more than 2,000. Go for these if you want, but you might want to munch celery sticks for the rest of the day. (Do you live in one of America’s 50 most obese cities?)

Here are the fast foods with the most calories: