Sometimes, no matter how healthy we try to be, we find ourselves at the drive-thru of our favorite fast food restaurant. Maybe you’re on a road trip and it’s your only option, or maybe you just need that cheat day — we totally get it! But you don’t want the diet to go all the way out of the window, right? That’s why, using the free January app, we’ve created our 2024 guide to the healthiest fast food restaurants, so you can make the best choice possible for your next trip to the drive-thru.

So which fast food chains took home the titles? Here’s a quick summary of our best picks:

‍Healthiest fast food burger goes to…

• McDonald’s hamburger (Wait, McDonald’s?? Yes, you read that right!) Read on to find out why

Healthiest vegetarian option goes to…

• Taco Bell’s Spicy Potato Soft Taco. See how Taco Bell narrowly beat out Chipotle

Best pick for overall blood sugar control goes to…

• Read on to see why we chose not to pick a definitive winner for this

GRAND PRIZE: Healthiest fast food restaurant goes to…

• Chick-Fil-A. Find out what food item tipped the scale in Chick-Fil-A’s favor!

Carry on reading for a deep dive into how we picked our winners, and see the data from the January app!

January’s guide to the healthiest fast food restaurants

So what makes a “healthy” choice? Well, health can be subjective, so we’ve broken it down into a few categories:

• Healthiest fast food burger
• Healthiest vegetarian option
• Best for blood sugar
• Best low-calorie option
• Top overall pick for the healthiest fast food restaurant 

There are a ton of fast food restaurants to choose from, so we narrowed that down too. While places like Subway, Starbucks, and even Panera Bread often get classified as “fast food,” for the purpose of this guide, we’ve kept it to restaurants you might see by the side of a highway, ones that typically offer ‘fast food’ like food items — think burgers, fries, nuggets, burritos, etc. Here are some of the fast food restaurants we looked at:

• McDonald’s
• Burger King
• Chick-Fil-A
• KFC
• Taco Bell
• Chipotle
• Arby’s
• Wendy’s
• Jack in the Box
• Whataburger
• In N Out (for all you West Coasters)

How did we come up with our results? We used the free January app to look up a restaurant’s menu, and then checked out the calories for each food item they offer, the macros of each, and — thanks to January’s proprietary AI — got insights into our predicted glucose response. What’s nice about January’s AI is we didn’t actually need to eat one of everything to see how our blood sugar would respond (can you imagine!), we could simply open the app and get our predicted glucose spike without ever having to take a bite. 

If you’d like to try this for yourself, download the January app here. It’s completely free to download and use.

What is the healthiest fast food burger?

It’s a stretch to label any fast food burger as “healthy,” so let’s stick with “healthier.” We’re looking for burgers that are lighter on calories, lower on fat and sodium, and easier on your blood sugar. Here’s what we found when searching for burgers in the January app:

• Burger King and Mcdonald’s had the lowest calorie hamburgers at just 250 calories
• A hamburger at In-N-Out, for example, had 360 calories
• While both Burger King and McDonald’s had fractionally lower protein (13g and 12g, respectively, compared to 16g with In-N-Out), they both contained far less sodium (550mg & 510mg, vs. 660mg)
• Other options like Wendy’s, Whataburger, Jack In The Box, and so on, all contained more calories and more sodium
• Our predicted blood sugar response was similar for all options (the meat is unlikely to spike you much, it’s the bread that gets you!). As you can see in the above image, McDonald's had a fractionally better spike compared to the competition

With that, we’d give the nod (surprisingly) to McDonald’s over Burger King as the ‘healthier’ of the not-so-healthy fast food burgers, given a McDonald’s hamburger also has slightly less sugar and less saturated fat than Burger King.

So, in our findings, if you need a quick fast-food burger but don’t want to impact your macros too much, a McDonald’s hamburger is the way to go. Now, does a McDonald’s hamburger taste as good as a hamburger from In-N-Out? I think we all know the answer to that—but this isn’t a taste test!

Blood sugar tip: If you’re looking to control your blood sugar, try removing the bun (or even just one side of it). The image above from the January app shows a Burger King burger with and without a bun. Removing the bun literally removes the blood sugar spike. In-N-Out offers its burgers protein-style (where the bun is replaced by lettuce). That’ll be the healthiest option if you’re willing to go sans bun.

What is the healthiest fast food vegetarian option? 

If you’re a vegetarian or vegan in a fast-food joint, chances are your options are limited. Sure, Burger King and many other restaurants now offer Impossible or Beyond Meat options, but according to the January app, those are typically high in calories and sodium.

Even Chipotle, which one would assume would be the clear favorite for a healthy vegetarian option, can quickly have you soaring over the 1,000 mark for both calories and sodium. If you end up at Chipotle, you’ll need to avoid the calorie-dense tortillas, so stick to a custom bowl. 

• Opt for fajita veggies (which have super low calories and are high in fiber)
• Add lettuce, which will help fill you up for little-to-no calories
• Add guacamole (yes, that adds an extra 230 calories, but it’s probably worth it based on the nutritional profile and frankly the extra taste it’ll bring to your bowl)
• Add some pinto beans, which again are high in fiber
• Ask for a half portion of cilantro brown rice (half a portion will significantly reduce the glucose impact)
• If you can, avoid the dressing altogether — adding the vinaigrette adds 220 calories and a further 820mg of sodium!

If you’re a vegetarian, Chipotle would be a more appetizing choice, but as you can see, you have to be really careful with your toppings. 

Our winner for the healthiest fast food vegetarian option, however, goes to Taco Bell. Taco Bell is known for its wide variety of vegetarian options, but you do need to be mindful about which item you choose. For example, you can get a Veggie Power Bowl with a modest 420 calories and 11g of fiber (which is excellent). Sounds perfect, right? However, when you check the sodium content, you’ll see it reads 870mg — yikes!

Instead, our pick goes to the Spicy Potato Soft Taco. When looking it up in the January app, as you can see above, it’s just 240 calories, doesn’t provide a particularly large blood sugar spike, and most importantly, the sodium is just 470mg. Sure, it only has 5g of protein and 2g of fiber, but you’re unlikely to nail every macro when opting for fast food.  

What is the best pick for overall blood sugar control?

It’s hard to pick the “best” here because controlling your blood sugar in a fast-food context will primarily depend on the amount of carbohydrates in your meal. As mentioned above, if you opt for a traditional cheeseburger, the January app will show a relatively sizable spike in blood sugar. But, if you remove the bun, that spike goes away entirely. 

Perhaps the best way to determine the optimal meal for your blood sugar (we’re all different, which is where January’s personalized AI comes into play) is by searching it up in the January app. You can see in the above image on the left where we’re searching for individual ingredients at Chipotle. The small colored line allows you to visualize your personalized glucose curve for each ingredient or meal. Look for the “low impact” green line, and select those ingredients. Avoid the orange lines, where possible, and definitely skip anything showing up as red. 

When it comes to items like rice (which is high in carbs and therefore likely to spike your blood sugar), choose a half serving. You can see in the January app screenshots above how much of an impact simply cutting the serving size in half will make when it comes to blood sugar control. The middle image is with a full serving, vs. the image on the right which is half a serving. Note how much lower that blood sugar spike is!

What is the best low calorie fast food meal?

We already mentioned that McDonald’s hamburger is the lowest-calorie and probably your best bet when it comes to fast-food burgers. Pair that 250-calorie burger with a 15-calorie portion of apple slices (make it two portions if you need more food) and a diet drink, and you’ll have an entire meal for 265-280 calories. If you’re really looking to watch your calories at the drive-thru, this is going to be a solid option. 

However, is it the “best” low-calorie option? Maybe a greasy burger isn’t your jam. In that case, you could opt for Chick-fil-A’s grilled nuggets (130 calories; 25g of protein) and pair them with a 50-calorie fruit cup and a diet soda. You’re now below 200 calories for an entire meal, and it’s decidedly healthier than McDonald’s’ option. This is definitely our pick for the best low-calorie fast food meal. 

What is the healthiest fast food restaurant?

Last but not least, and the moment you’ve all been waiting for, what is the healthiest fast food restaurant of them all? We’ve spent countless hours looking at a variety of food items in the January app, analyzing each’s calories, macros, blood sugar response, and more. 

Our overall winner goes to Chik-fil-A. 

It’s little wonder the lines are typically around the block when it comes to Chik-fil-A. You’re absolutely indulging in fast food when eating there, but it somehow seems decidedly ‘cleaner’ fast food. A chicken sandwich, for instance, will come as standard with no dressing. And most importantly when looking at the ‘healthy scale’, there are a bunch of grilled chicken options. Grilled chicken, specifically, is going to be lighter on calories and far better on your blood sugar, and you can get grilled chicken burgers, nuggets, and even wraps. Chik-Fil-A also offers numerous salad options, including a kale crunch side salad (“kale, at a fast food restaurant?” I hear you say!). And so if you’re looking for a ‘healthier’ fast food option, we believe Chik-Fil-A is the place to go, based on the data we’ve seen within the January app.

If you’d like to peruse your own favorite fast food restaurants, and look up meals for your next drive-thru, download the January app here. It’s completely free to download and use and provides a wealth of nutritional and health information so you can make the best choice possible. While we’ve been focusing solely on fast food for this article, the app is the perfect companion for any meal — be it at a restaurant or when cooking at home. So don’t worry about a few cheat meals here and there. As you’ve seen today, with a bit of research, you can find options that won’t derail your diet.