Think Again Before Ordering A Salad At Wendy's

It's easy to think of a salad as the healthiest choice on the menu — but that's not always the case. In fact, if you're thinking about ordering a salad, then you may want to think again. Essentially, the salad options at Wendy's aren't exactly the healthiest, even if they're labeled as such on the menu — especially when it comes to the sodium.

Wendy's offers three full-sized salads: the Chicken Caesar Salad, the Taco Salad, and the Apple Pecan Salad. By reading the nutrition labels on Wendy's website, you'll find that the Chicken Caesar Salad contains 1130 milligrams of sodium, which is almost half of the recommended daily value. But it gets worse with the Taco Salad, which consists of lettuce, chili, sour cream, tomatoes, salsa, cheese, and tortilla chips. The Taco Salad contains a whopping 2030 milligrams of sodium, which comes out to about 88% of the recommended daily value. Of course, if you're really craving the Taco Salad, then you can still order it — it's just important to be aware that this one salad does contain nearly all of the sodium that's recommended for the day, so you may want to only have it every once in a while.

The best salad, sodium-wise, of Wendy's full-sized salads is the Apple Pecan Chicken Salad. It contains 790 milligrams, which accounts for about 34% of the recommended daily value. However, it has the most sugar out of the three salads with 21 grams, whereas the Taco Salad has 13 grams and the Chicken Caesar has just 2 grams.

You may think the other menu items must have just as much, if not more, sodium. Well, to start with, the most straightforward burger, the Dave's Single, actually has less sodium than both the Chicken Caesar Salad and the Taco Salad, with 1050 milligrams of sodium. But more notably, every single burger on the menu — including the triple burgers — has less sodium than the 2030 milligrams in the Taco Salad. The burger that comes the closest is the Big Bacon Classic Triple with 1850 milligrams. 

Beyond the burgers, many of the other menu items are either equal to or better than the Chicken Caesar Salad and the Taco Salad in terms of sodium. The Classic Chicken Sandwich, for example, has 1450 milligrams of sodium, which is just between the two salads. The Sausage, Egg, and Cheese English Muffin from the breakfast menu has less than both salads, at 940 milligrams. 

However, a couple of menu items exceed the Taco Salad in sodium: the breakfast burrito with sausage and the breakfast burrito with bacon. The bacon version has 2220 milligrams, while the sausage version has 2130 milligrams. As stated above, with the Taco Salad, that amount of sodium is a huge portion of the recommended daily intake. Of course, eating these items from time to time is totally okay as long as you understand the nutritional factors. But still, it may not be a bad idea to perfect your own homemade breakfast burrito or healthy taco salad.