You Won’t Believe the Calories in Your Favorite Fast Food Cheeseburgers

Fast-food is known for its convenience and addicting taste; it is certainly not known for its nutritional content. However, NBA star Ray Allen is seeking to change that. Alongside his wife, the athlete started an organic fast-food chain called Grown. Though originally launched in Miami, the restaurant is now expanding throughout the United States. The […] The post You Won’t Believe the Calories in Your Favorite Fast Food Cheeseburgers appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..

Jun 25, 2025 - 19:06

You Won’t Believe the Calories in Your Favorite Fast Food Cheeseburgers

Fast-food is known for its convenience and addicting taste; it is certainly not known for its nutritional content. However, NBA star Ray Allen is seeking to change that. Alongside his wife, the athlete started an organic fast-food chain called Grown. Though originally launched in Miami, the restaurant is now expanding throughout the United States. The chain offers the same casual, drive-thru format Americans rely on for convenience, while offering healthier menu options. Grown’s website states, “we believe food should be delicious, organic and inspiring. It’s not made, it’s not manufactured, it’s grown.”

Excluding Allen’s newly introduced organic chain, fast-food is almost always packed with fat and excess calories. If you’re craving a cheeseburger, you are probably focused on taste over healthy caloric intake. Cheeseburgers are unhealthy almost by default; you won’t see a committed dieter ordering something called a Baconzilla. But just as with most popular fast foods, there can be a considerable gap between the highest-calorie and lowest-calorie examples.

To identify the cheeseburgers with the most and fewest calories at 19 of the biggest fast-food chains in the U.S., 24/7 Wall St. reviewed nutritional information – including calories, fats, and sodium – on each chain’s official website. We selected the cheeseburgers with the highest and lowest number of calories offered by each chain. Only food items intended for consumption by one person were included, and computations cover only the burger and its garnishes, not a complete meal (for instance, with fries and a drink). Cheeseburgers on kids’ menus were excluded.

Before we go any further, it’s worth mentioning that when it comes to nutrition, calorie count isn’t the be-all-end-all. One slice of Kraft American cheese, for example, contains about 60 calories, while a cup of chopped spinach contains about 90. Spinach is obviously a healthier product than pasteurized process cheese food, though. So even if a plain Burger King cheeseburger has fewer calories than a Triple Whopper with Cheese, that doesn’t mean that it’s healthy. (Considering burgers and other menu items, these popular fast foods are the biggest calorie bombs.)

There are some pretty simple ways to tell if a cheeseburger is going to be absolutely loaded with calories. The first and most obvious one is the sheer size of the burger. Is it one small patty, topped with a single slice of cheese? Then it’s probably not going to set you back too many calories. Is it three patties topped with cheese, bacon, and fried onions? Then it should probably be a (very) occasional indulgence.

The cheeseburger is one of the most delicious foods on earth, and one bite seems to trigger all of the brain’s pleasure sensors. You might be surprised to learn that a straightforward fast-food cheeseburger isn’t actually all that caloric; a basic McDonald’s cheeseburger only contains 300 calories, about the same amount as a small, sweetened yogurt with some granola. But once you start adding on extra patties, more cheese, bacon, and other toppings, the calorie count can really go through the roof. Some burgers on this list pack in more than half of the 2,000 daily calories recommended by the FDA.

This post was updated on June 25, 2025 to include news of Grown expanding throughout the U.S.

A&W Restaurants: Original Bacon Cheeseburger – Double

Calories: 650
Total fat: 36 g
Saturated fat: 13 g
Trans fat: 1 g
Sodium: 1,160 mg

A&W Restaurants: Cheeseburger

Calories: 400
Total fat: 16 g
Saturated fat: 6 g
Trans fat: 1.5 g
Sodium: 890 mg

A&W Restaurants: Mushroom Onion Melt – Burger – Single

Calories: 400
Total fat: 17 g
Saturated fat: 6 g
Trans fat: 0 g
Sodium: 960 mg

Burger King: Triple Whopper with Cheese

Bangkok, TH - DECEMBER 21, 2017: American Burger King's branch are franchised in the base ground floor in the Siam Paragon, the most luxury shopping mall in Bangkok.