This is a cross post with my other blog, Uncommon Cents:

As those of you who read Uncommon Cents know well, I’m frugal; for those of you who read Athletic Diabetic know well, I’m trying hard to keep my weight down, my blood sugar down, and my conditioning up. So one of the intersections of these is with food and eating out.

McDonalds is not exactly a healthy place to eat by reputation. What they are known for is fast food, and at least some of the time, cheap food on their dollar menu. I went there recently and discovered their side salad is a regular there.

This is a pretty deceptive picture in my estimation.

These salads are tiny. They also don’t provide a whole lot of anything as far as nutrition goes: 20 calories, 1 gram of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, 4 grams of carbohydrates total, and 1 gram of protein. I often have two of them.

I sometimes combine these with a McDouble, basically two hamburger patties with some mustard, ketchup, onions, and pickles–but without the bread. That makes it tough to figure out the actual nutritional value, because by getting rid of the bread I get rid of the vast majority of the carbohydrates, but I can’t find any chart telling me how much of the nutritional information on the McDouble is because of the bread. I can tell you, however, that it does very little to boost my blood sugar without the bread.

It’s hard to say how healthy all of this is, even though I can say it meets the definition of inexpensive. All I really have to measure by are nutritional charts that are incomplete (or maybe too complete) and my own blood sugar. But judging by the latter, the combination of a side salad (or two) and a McDouble don’t seem to make my blood sugar jump, and for that–and the small impact on my wallet–I am grateful.
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