Doublin' Down

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Apr 14, 2010 3:40PM

The terrorists don't "hate our freedoms." They hate what we do with our freedoms. Case in point: Kentucky Fried Chicken's Double Down sandwich. In a time when the debate rages about how fast food chains are contributing to America's obesity epidemic, launching a sandwich featuring bacon, cheese and Thousand Island-style secret sauce fit between two pieces of fried chicken breast — or grilled, if you're "health conscious" — is a brazen display of chutzpah, if not an outright "fuck you" to those same critics.

As the member of this website's staff charged with plotting the direction of our food and drink coverage, I wouldn't ask Stolpman, Anthony, Carrie and Megan to try something I wouldn't eat myself. Except for this sandwich, which is the equivalent of eating a warm handbowl of salt and spices soaked in chicken fat; i.e., "not good." (Let's see KFC market that in the next couple of years.) The most alarming bit of the Double Down's nutritional information isn't the 540 calories per serving or the 32 grams of fat, but the 1380 mg of sodium per serving. Amazingly, the Grilled Double Down contains 50 more milligrams of sodium. The combo meal, with a drink and KFc's steak cut fries, is simply a time bomb of terrible carbohydrates.

Tomorrow, Megan will calculate how much I reduced my life expectancy eating this.