if ignorance is bliss...

It's possible that I'm about to ruin something you enjoy. Especially if you're the sort of person that enjoys food from Steak N' Shake, one of the midwest's most well known examples of 24 hour dining.

I realize that no one goes to Steak N' Shake to eat healthy. It may even be safe to say that people eat at Steak N' Shake as a sort of act of protest to the idea of health in general. If you consider health a cause worth fighting against, eating at Steak N' Shake is sort of like dousing yourself with gasoline and lighting a match. In the end you've really only hurt yourself.

Just for fun, let's say that you're trying to keep a relatively sane diet, but one evening you're working late and suddenly you find yourself eating at Steak N' Shake. Now, it is Steak N' Shake, but you can find a grilled chicken breast sandwich on the menu.

Anyone who's ever tried to watch what they eat would immediately think a grilled chicken breast sandwich is surely more healthy than any red meat option. But that's not the case at Steak N' Shake, and it's mainly due to a magical ingredient known as "Grilling Oil for Chicken" (I think the capitalization is well deserved here). This grilling oil has 135 calories and 15 grams of fat (2.5 saturated). I'm sure you'd want to add on some honey mustard (usually a fat free ingredient) for another 7 grams of fat (1 saturated). Add on the chicken breast, and the bun, and you'll end up with a grand total of 471 calories, 26 grams of fat, 4 of which are saturated fat. Now, admittedly that's not a horrible saturated number, but I generally try to stay away from anything with 26 grams of fat, even if I'm not attempting to eat healthy.

In comparison, a single steakburger packs 346 calories, 17 grams of fat, 6 of which are saturated fat. I know which one I'd rather eat.

Let's say you're feeling a little crazy, and you decide what you'd really like is the Steak N' Shake Frisco Melt. I can tell you from personal experience that it really is the best thing on the menu, and although it's a sloppy mess, it's quite rewarding. That is unless you look up the nutritional information.

The Frisco Melt: 1173 calories, 93 grams of fat, 28.5 of which are saturated.

Let's compare that to McDonald's Big Mac, which is generally known as the sandwich standard of unhealth®.

The Big Mac: 560 calories, 30 grams of fat, 10 of which are saturated.

So the Frisco Melt is more than twice as bad as a Big Mac. That seems a little hard to believe, but let's keep going.

Miracle Whip (15 grams, about 1 tablespoon): 40 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 0.5 of which are saturated.

That means in order to get the same amount of calories that the Frisco Melt provides, you'd have to eat a little over 29 tablespoons of pure Miracle Whip. To get the fat number, it's 26.57 tablespoons of Miracle Whip. But the most impressive number is the saturated fat number. It would take 57 tablespoons of Miracle Whip to equal the saturated fat in the Frisco Melt.

You might say to yourself "Fifty seven tablespoons sounds like a lot, but that's just a number... what does that actually look like?" Well, it looks surprisingly like a 32 ounce jar of Miracle Whip. And that would be because there are only 64 tablespoon sized servings in a 32 ounce jar of Miracle Whip. So the Frisco Melt is only 7 tablespoons short.

Having said all that (and knowing the dangers involved), the last time I was at Steak N' Shake I had a Frisco Melt. And a cup of chili (more scary numbers I wont get into). And Fries.

And a shake.

Then I went home and took a bike ride.