Yesterday we swung by Lord Of The Fries’ new Sydney store for a hot chips taste-test. The chips were delicious, but we were somewhat concerned by the absence of nutritional information on the menu board and website — were we eating something reasonably healthy or dangerously fatty? Well, Lord Of The Fries saw our post and has sent through an official response…
“We noticed you mentioned in your post there is no nutritional information on the Lord of the Fries website,” a Lord Of The Fries spokesperson wrote to us. “We want you to know that we are currently addressing this, and I have attached the nutritional information for your reference.”
So how does Lord Of The Fries’ menu hold up when it comes to kilojoules and fat content? Not too badly, as it turns out.
A box of plain fries, which weighs in at a hefty 334g, contains 1590kJ which is 18 percent of your recommended daily energy intake. This compares favorably to a large fries from McDonald’s, which contains 1900kJ despite being substantially smaller. A large fries from Hungry Jack’s contains even more energy, at 2147kJ.
Lord Of The Fries does contain more saturated fats however (4.5g vs. McDonald’s 2.9g) although this is probably due to the much larger serving size.
Naturally, adding sauce to your fries ups the energy count substantially — the ‘African’ sauce, for example, brings the total to 2250kJ; that’s an extra 660 kilojoules for the same sized serving. The healthiest sauce option appears to be Mexican (1630kJ) followed by Aussie (1740kJ).
In other words, while they’re certainly not good for you, Lord Of The Fries’ hot chips appear to be slightly healthier than other fast food chains; especially if you stick to one of the lighter sauces.
We were considerably less impressed by Lord Of The Fries’ burgers, however. On its website, the company boasts that its burgers contain “virtually no fat”. Let’s take a look at the evidence:
We think you’ll agree that 21.4g of fat doesn’t really qualify as “virtually none”. That said, the Lord Of The Fries Original Burger still shapes up pretty well compared to other fast food burgers — a Hungry Jack’s Ultimate Whopper burger packs in 76.9g of fat, which is nearly four times as much as a Lord Of The Fries Original Burger.
Comments
31 responses to “So Just How Unhealthy Is Lord Of The Fries?”
The place is called Lord of the Fries. They sell chips covered in sauce. Do you really need the nutritional info to tell you it’s probably not the healthiest thing to eat? Seriously.
Well, yeah I do actually. There are varying degrees of unhealthiness. By your rationale, no fast food should display nutritional info.
Its like ordering the double fatty mclarge burger combo and washing it down with a Diet beverage. Its not actually gonna make much of a difference at all
That’s a stupid misconception, actually. I track my daily calorie input, and sometimes I’ll go to a fast food place and think “Ok, I’ll allow myself 1,200 calories for this meal”, and if I buy a large soft drink, that’s a decent chunk of calories wasted right there.
Indeed, indeed. The “fatty food + diet drink” analogy/argument falls flat on its face in the face of actual evidence.
If you’re counting calories, and that’s not what all diets are about, then you can actually fit in a “healthier” fast food meal to your daily consumption.. that’s why knowing the nutritional information is important.. knowing that you can get a 600kJl less serving of chips that is actually bigger than another brand’s.. well.. the math speaks for itself.
YES YES YES TO THE ABOVE POSTERS!
Considering how calorically dense and sugar laden sugary soft drinks are, choosing the diet option of often a substantial improvement on any ‘fast food’ purchase.
The joke speaks to this perfect or nothing mentality when it comes to eating. I think that mentality is disastrous. Hardly anyone can eat the most healthiest foods all the time, and I don’t really see how that’s a worthy goal anyway. Significant health and esthetic improvements can be wrought through simple marginal changes like changing your soft drink to a diet soft drink. Improvement again by changing to water.
If you go to McDonald’s, maybe don’t buy the fries.
If you have a coffee, don’t add 3 teaspoons of sugar. Maybe 2, then 1, then 0.
Going from a regular diet to a ‘super perfect diet is a recipe for failing by day 3.
That joke is a harmful joke. I hate it so much.
In a similar sense, people who follow IIFYM find nutritional information very useful. I know what I’m getting and what it means for the rest of my meal. I don’t look at food in terms of healthy and unhealthy, I have macro and micro goals that I need to hit. Some days I’ll have Macca’s, some days I won’t. If I do have Maccas then it means dinner is probably going to largely be vegetables.
Hear hear,
Sometimes, when I have to do a double shift, I always make sure my dealer gets the vegan meth, I don’t want to poison my self.
I Only get the meth that is processed with quality legit chemicals and Tasmanian rainwater.
Some peoploe don’t even care what goes in there bodies, like my mum. She has been banging the dealer around the corner, he only sells the toxic meth.
Perhaps type the comment BEFORE smoking aforementioned meth? Might make a little more sense then.
My rationale? What is that exactly? I never said nutritional info shouldnt be displayed at all, just that getting all up-in-arms because they didnt have it immediately available seems silly.
I think it came across more like you were suggesting nutrition information is not of value but I believe you didn’t mean it that way.
Next time pick a mature writer who doesn’t answer an attack with another attack. Classy.
My reply was hardly an attack. It wasn’t remotely aggressive or insulting.
It’s all good. I wasnt really attacking you, just throwing my 2 cents in. And I didnt take your reply as an attack either.
That fat content comes to 7.1%. By comparison a Swisse “Premium quality, nutrient enriched protein bar” has 9.7%. I’d say if the fat content of your burger designed for the fast food crowd is less than that marketed to weight trainers some hyperbole is warranted.
7.1% per 100 grams.
304 grams.
Compare the “Per 100g” figures… that’s what they’re there for.. to compare like with like.
The “per 100g” figures are great for foods you can easily vary the quantity of. But when going to a fast food restaurant I usually order and eat whole burgers, so it is relevant to compare the “per serving” nutritional figures of different burgers.
If you could order 100g of Big Mac at McDonalds, things might be a bit different 🙂
Huh? I can’t figure out if that is a comprehension or maths fail there James. Did you understand what Stevo was saying?
I understood what he was getting at, but don’t agree with the premise.
If I am going to decide whether to get a Big Mac or a Whopper as a meal and eat the entire burger, then the per-serving nutritional info is the important set of figures. If I just looked at the per-100g figures, I’d see that they have roughly the same energy density, but since a Whopper is somewhat larger than a Big Mac it has somewhat higher total kJ. This is immediately obvious if I look at the per-serving figures.
Common sense would dictate that eating potato deep fried in oil is not particularly healthy.
they’re chips… do you need a label to tell you they’re fattening? I don’t need a warning label on a gun to know it could kill me either
Lord of the Fries chips are pretty special as are some of the sauces. Buyer beware when ordering a Burger or Hot Dog, they are actually vegan, no meat whatsoever. I’ve had several friends comment on their burgers not being great, each one of them believing they were chowing down on a bit of beef. Oh and the chicken isn’t chicken either. But do try the chips.
Going to Lord of the Fries and asking for a low fat or healthy option is like going to a hooker for a hug.
Am I the only one here that prefers to have their chips with NO sauce? Just put some salt or chicken salt on them and be done with it. Sauce makes the chips all soggy and not at all appetising for me.
I prefer to have the sauce on the side, best of both worlds 🙂 Crispy chips with the added deliciousness of a sauce.
I wish more places would triple-fry their chips so that they’re more crunch than potato.
I lived in Bundaberg (yes, where the Rum comes from) for a spell, and there was a fish-and-chips shop there called ‘Busy Bee’, which did the crunchiest damn chips I’d ever tasted. And I kid you not, many nights and during lunch hours, there was a queue out the door of people just dying to get some of those deliciously over-crunchy chips. Most of us never even ordered any fish. Just crunchy, delicious chips.
A McDonald’s cheeseburger has only 12 grams of fat compared to the 219 of fat in the vegetarian burgers from Lord of the Fries. And it really is a burger. I mean, it contains meat.
Bugger the fat, look at how many carbs are in that stuff!
No trans fat information
What kind of oil do they use, or do they use shorting.
The fat content of the burgers doesn’t seem that crazy – perhaps virtually no fat is an overstatement given the nature of meat in general.. Besides that – it’s very hard to make a burger that does not taste like garbage without a proportional amount of fat.
I don’t think it’s that crazy – and good on them for even replying at all!
Has anyone tasted these soy burgers? They don’t sound very nice, but I always see a massive line at this place (walk past there every day).