Bradley Simpson

I was walking around the harbour today and stopped in at Subway to get some lunch. It got me thinking about the relative nutritional value of a Subway sandwich versus say a McDonalds DeliChoice.

So if you find yourself unprepared, stuck in town for lunch, in a hurry, which is the better of the two evils? Working strictly from their respective supplied nutritional information I have put the McDonalds Classic Chicken roll and the Subway 6-inch Roast Chicken sandwich head to head:

Energy

Subway comes out on top by 100kJ in this category (1380 v 1280). This is a small amount of energy. To put it in real terms if you went to McDonalds every weekday lunch of the year rather than Subway, you would put on just under 1 kilogram (all other things remaining equal).

Protein

Subway wins out by 3.7g (19.4g v 23.1g). Another small win, but a win none the less.

Fat

Relatively equal on this front: Total/saturated of 5.0g/1.1g for McDonalds v 5.1g/1.5g for Subway.

Carbs

Another small win for Subway: Carbs/sugar of 40.2g/4.4g vs McDonalds 49.1g/10.2g.

Sodium

Both give approximately half your recommended intake of sodium (unlike some micronutrients, more is not a good thing with respect to sodium). Subway comes out on top again (970mg v 775mg).

So looking exclusively at the nutrient profile Subway comes out on top – just.

However, there are other factors that should be factored into this argument such as taste, time, freshness, and micronutrient content.

These categories are a little subjective and/or hard to measure, but I would prefer the Subway in all categories except time, which I think differs between outlets.

It is interesting to note that if I did go for my usual Honey Oat bread, the Subway option would now lose out in the energy competition due to Honey Oat being more energy dense that white bread.

So my advice as a Nutritionist: Prepare your meals ahead of time and get neither.

This entry was posted on July 9, 2007 at 10:41 pm and is filed under Diet, Fat Loss, Food, Nutrition, Weight Loss, What I'm Eating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.