Canadian KFCs discontinue the popular sandwich
Jordana Levine Food columnist
Three minutes after I asked about KFC’s Double Down on Facebook, I received this response from a friend: “Worst idea ever. Don’t do it. I ate half and felt like I OD’ed on sodium.”
Twenty minutes later, my 34-year-old cousin wrote: “I ate one. It was terrible. I had it delivered. I still finished it. I feel shame.”
The “sandwich,” which substitutes bread with two pieces of breaded chicken and has bacon, cheese and sauce in the middle, has been discontinued in Canada. The Double Down boasts 540 calories, 30 g of fat and a whopping 1,740 mg of sodium, which bulldozes past the recommended daily sodium intake of 1,500 mg per day for people between nine and 50-years old.
High blood pressure, often caused by sodium, is the leading preventable cause of death, according to Health Canada’s Sodium Reduction Strategy.
When I asked the woman at the counter of the Quinpool KFC about whether the fast food joint was still selling the so-called sandwich, three days after the Nov. 15 announcement, she said they would continue to sell them until the location runs out of stock. And people are still buying. “They keep comin’ back for ’em,” she shrugged.
KFC sold over one million Double Downs in Canada since its Oct. 18 debut in the country, making it the most successful menu item of all time at the fast food chain – and proving that even Canadians don’t give a crap about what we put in our bodies.
My friend Zack, who I would classify as the average 20-year-old guy, plays a lot of sports, drinks a lot of beer, and fuels himself with fast food and frozen chicken wings. He eats pretty much whatever he wants and never gets fat. He called his experience with the Double Down “magical” and said he only felt a little bit sick after eating it. He barely believed me when I told him it was being banned across the country.
“That’s preposterous,” he said. “If somebody wants a Double Down, they should be able to get a Double Down. There’s plenty of things more unhealthy than the Double Down out there.”
Although this meal is atrociously unhealthy — even Dan Howe, CEO of KFC’s parent company, told the public to only eat it occasionally — Zack is right. The Double Down isn’t the only offender.
Buying a large order of fries from KFC, although it won’t overload you on the calories, will give you more than double the recommended daily sodium, packing in 3,480mg. A Baconator Double at Wendy’s trumps the Double Down in every category, with 980 calories, 63 g of fat and 1830 mg of sodium. A Tendercrisp chicken sandwich at Burger King has 100 mg less sodium than the Double Down, but it still has 800 calories and 46 grams of fat. And a large Quizno’s tuna melt dishes out 1,520 calories, 101 g of fat and 2,020 mgs of sodium. I think I may have actually eaten that last one before. It’s kind of scary.
Trust me, there are more delinquents in the world of fast food. A lot more.
So why is the Double Down getting the boot in Canada when there are still so many menu items threatening to take us out?
And even if those menu items were removed, who’s to say it would make fast food-lovers any less inclined to eat the most heart-stopping meals they can find? Most people have heard about the McGangBang, a craze that involves putting a McChicken sandwich inside a double cheeseburger. More recently I came across the McRushmore — a sandwich that truly means something if you experienced it and lived – combines four different McDonald’s sandwiches.
I thought we were supposed to be eating to survive.
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