Breaking, freaking news....

HOLY CRAP!!! Cheeseburgers are bad for you. Who the hell knew?
Here's an article that appeared on the home page of Yahoo! from the good folks at Men's Health.
Pro Tip--cheeseburgers are delicious and nature's most perfect food, I know this to be a fact, because I took the time to type it and post it on the Internet. Nothing that is delicious is good for you.

6 Worst Fast-Food Burgers (and What You Should Eat Instead!)

By David Zinczenko, with Matt Goulding - Posted on Thu, Dec 17, 2009, 11:56 am PST

Eat This, Not That
by David Zinczenko, with Matt Goulding a Yahoo! Health Expert for Nutrition

A hamburger isn't, by itself, a terrible nutritional choice. Topped with some lettuce and tomato, ketchup, and mustard—and placed in a relatively small bun—a burger is a high-protein treat that shouldn't pack too much fat or too many calories. But just as country music went from skinny little Hank Williams playing honky-tonks to Garth Brooks touring stadiums—and just as baseball went from wiry Jackie Robinson stealing home to muscle-bound Barry Bonds stealing homers—so have our burgers evolved from lean and simple to very fat and complicated.
How hard has it become to decode the once-simple hamburger? Get a load of these. With Eat This, Not That! 2010 we've unearthed the biggest fast-food burger bombs in America, and offer reasonable and delicious alternatives.

Worst Cheeseburger with Everything

Wendy’s Double with Everything and Cheese

700 calories

40 g fat (17 g saturated, 2 g trans)

1,440 mg sodium

In the pantheon of fast-food burgers, this cannot compete with the atrocities wrought by the Double Whoppers and Six Dollar Burgers of the world. But there are too many burgers at Wendy’s to end up with this mistake. Take the Double Stack below—with small chili—for example. With 37 grams of protein and 6 grams of fiber, it might be the most satisfying $2 meal in America. 

Bonus tip: Find out which Wendy’s burger meal made our list of the 39 Healthiest Foods in America. 

Eat This Instead!

Double Stack with Small Chili

550 calories

24 g fat (10.5 g saturated, 1 g trans)

1,640 mg sodium

Worst Burger and Fries

In-N-Out Burger Hamburger and French Fries

790 calories

37 g fat (10 g saturated)

895 mg sodium

You’re heading into dangerous territory whenever you add fries to your order at In-N-Out. Sure, they’re trans-fat-free, but that won’t protect you from the 400 greasy, gut-bloating calories they carry. Instead, skip the fries and get serious about your burger. In-N-Out was offering up the low-carb treat long before other restaurants started making money off the Atkins craze. Take advantage of their prescience—and the 150-calorie savings—by simply tacking the phrase “protein style” onto your order.

Bonus tip: Another way to shed pounds quickly? Download Eat This, Not That! to your iPhone. It's like having your own personal nutritionist (and details on 30,000 foods) at your fingertips!

Eat This Instead!

Protein Style Double-Double with grilled onion, ketchup, and mustard

440 calories

30 g fat (16 g saturated)

1,080 mg sodium

Worst Plain Cheeseburger

Five Guys Cheeseburger (plain)

840 calories

55 g fat (22.5 g saturated)

1,050 mg sodium

Even if you get the regular (i.e., bi-pattied) cheeseburger naked, you’ll still be taking in more than 250 calories and 20 grams of fat extra over the seemingly decadent bacon and sauteed mushroom burger. That’s because what Five Guys calls a “Little Burger,” healthy people call a “normal burger.” Plus, if you limit yourself to a single beef patty, you can get away with a couple of indulgent toppings like cheese or bacon. 

Eat This Instead!

Little Bacon Burger with Sauteed Mushrooms and A1 Steak Sauce

575 calories

33 g fat (14.5 g saturated)

920 mg sodium

Worst Burger Brand

Carl’s Jr. Six Dollar Burger

890 calories

54 g fat (20 g saturated, 2 g trans)

2,040 mg sodium

What’s scary about the basic Six Dollar Burger is that with the exception of the bunless version, this is the leanest of the Six Dollar Burgers. That’s not a compliment—the rest of the line is just trashed beyond repair with egregious piles of bacon, guacamole, and teriyaki sauce. When at Carl’s, choose a Big Hamburger instead. Sure it’s big, but it’s not so big that you’re going to have to spend the next 3 days recovering. In fact, kids’ burgers aside, this is the only hamburger offered that won’t cost you in excess of 500 calories. 

Eat This Instead!

Big Hamburger

460 calories

17 g fat (8 g saturated, 0.5 g trans)

1,090 mg sodium

Worst “Original” Burger

Hardee’s Original Thickburger (1/3 lb)

910 calories

64 g fat (21 g saturated)

1,560 mg sodium

Shockingly, this is one of the least offensive of the Thickburgers. If you really need 1/3 pound of meat for lunch, make it the low-carb version and save yourself 490 calories. Or, choose a Double Cheeseburger, instead. It’s far from a model of sound nutrition, but the same could be said of Hardee’s itself. So if you want a burger with substance, you need to settle for the lesser of many evils. 

Bonus tip: Find out which burgers and other fast-food favorites we picked on our must-see list of Top Swaps for Weight Loss.

Eat This Instead!

Double Cheeseburger

510 calories

26 g fat (5 g saturated)

1,120 mg sodium

Worst Fast-Food Cheeseburger in America

Burger King Triple Whopper Sandwich with Cheese and Mayo

1,250 calories

84 g fat (32 g saturated, 3.5 g trans)

1,600 mg sodium

This Triple Whopper is triple trouble. You could remove two patties and still be looking at more calories than you should tussle with in one sitting. And the fact that it’s got more trans fat than you should eat in a day only adds insult to injury. The problem with BK burgers is that not a single one comes without the heart-harming trans-fatty acids, despite their long-standing promise to (someday) make their menu trans-fat-free. Your best bet when dealing with the King is to choose a chicken sandwich instead.

Eat This Instead!

Tendergrill Chicken Sandwich with Mayo

490 calories

21 g fat (4 g saturated, 0 g trans)

1,220 mg sodium

Sign up for your FREE Eat This, Not That newsletters to have more great tips like this delivered straight to your inbox, and follow Eat This, Not That! author Dave Zinczenko on Twitter!

Barney's Gourmet Hamburgers -- Santa Monica, CA

225 26th Street 

Santa Monica, CA 90402 

310.899.0133

http://www.barneyshamburgers.com/

  

The quest for burgers that were worth a darn took us to Barney's Gourmet Burgers in Brentwood/Santa Monica where we were obliged to choke down a "gourmet" burger so that you don't have to.  To call this cheeseburger "gourmet" was sort of like calling OJ "innocent."  

The high points:

1. Both the curly fries and the steak fries were pretty damned good.

2. The beef was cooked (grilled) flawlessly to a perfectly juicy Med Rare.

3. The grind was nice and coarse and the patty was loosely packed.

4. The service was prompt and accurate

The low points:

1. The bun was dry, dry, dry--it overwhelmed the burger with dryness.  Also, it was dry.

2. The burger meat, while juicy and properly cooked, lacked any real flavor or character.  The only thing that we really tasted was the char, and that was not interesting enough to sustain the dish.
3. The cheeseburger was vastly under-seasoned.  Salt and freaking pepper--how hard would that have been?
4. It was an oily mess--the Cheddar and the beef both oozed oil without the impact of any added flavor or creaminess.  We found ourselves repeatedly wiping our mouths to get the grease off of our lips. 

5. The walls of the restaurant were littered with "Best of..." awards from the past decade--all of these awards were from the Bay Area and not LA--they apparently do not know Jack and/or Shite about burgers in the Bay Area if this greasy disappointment was the best thing that ever happened.

This burger was like the really hot girl that just lays there--it looked great, and it did not deliver. It was a one-note dish, and that note wore thin within two bites.

Burger Review : This burger was pretty freakin' far from OK.  If you're looking for a good version of this burger, just go to The Counter.  Note...after re-review, The Counter was also awful.

Rating...2 Bites

Sub & Pub -- Fort Myers, FL

2150 West First Street

Fort Myers, FL

239-332-5200

Ordinarily, when a burger joint boasts, on its signage, that it's the best, one can expect a craptastic mess and a howl of outrage from TheBurgerBusters.  This was not one of those instances. 

Sub and Pub was only open for a couple of hours a day, and the menu was just standard bar fare for downtown office workers, but they nailed the burger.

Pictured here is a damn fine burger.  The price--about 7 bucks.  They made the loosely-formed patties with lean, aged beef, so order the 1/2 pounder to avoid the dryness that came with small, lean, thin patties.  They cooked them to Medium, and that worked with the not-especially-absorbent Kaiser roll.  The two slices of American cheese made up for the lack of seasoning and lent the proper creaminess to the lean beef.  They gave it a nice, but not robust, sear from the griddle, and it showed up hot.  In spite of this burger's flaws, it still delivered the total package of cheeseburgery goodness.  Aged beef funk and flavor, gooey cheese, and a bun that tied it together without stealing the show.

Burger Review : This was the best burger in this small town.

Rating...4 Bites

An Open Post to Vegetarians

The Stand -- Los Angeles, CA

2000 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, CA 90067
(310) 785-0400
Website

Today Colonel Mustard and I went to The Stand. Actually, Colonel Mustard suggested The Stand, and I grudgingly obliged, since this iteration of The Stand was/is in a glorified food court in Century City in the middle of a bunch of office buildings. In other words, the forecast called for disappointment on a mealy bun.

That forecast was dead wrong, and I am deeply ashamed for having doubted Colonel Mustard--he is a fine human being and a ruggedly handsome man.  The Stand burger was about 10 bucks with a side and a drink. The beef was a nicely aged, preformed, 1/3 pound patty, which got a nice set of grill marks. In spite of the grilling, the lean patty came out Medium without being dry---WIN.  The bun was moist and yeasty, and that yeastiness provided a perfect end note to counterbalance the aged beef funk that I started the bite with.  There were numerous cheese choices--I would suggest that the American cheese was the best bet here, because the cheeseburger was little under-seasoned, and the American cheese added the perfect amount of salt that made the beef really sing.  You can go with Cheddar and season to taste, but you also risk screwing up the entire dish with too much salt.

The burger to bun ratio--just right.  The picture does not do the burger justice.

This was by no stretch the best burger we've ever tried, but it was perfectly fine, and within walking distance from TheBurgerBusters lavishly appointed penthouse suite, which occupies an astonishing amount of space yet retains a modesty and reserved intimacy that one might not expect.  Word.

Burger Review :  Yes, have some. The surroundings created lowered expectations, which The Stand easily exceeded.

Rating...3 Bites

Burger Cake -- Yeah for Burger Cake

Today I managed to complete another trip around the sun, and as a result we all got to enjoy this fantastic cake from Bea's in Tarzana, CA.


Overview: I work with a good crew, and I am glad to have spent my birthday with them.

Hamburger Haven -- Los Angeles, CA

8954 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90069
(310) 659-8774

 "Haven" that's an interesting word to use in the name of your business.  Mr. Obama committed an additional 35,000 troops to Afghanistan.  Why?  Because it was a HAVEN for terrorists/Al-Qeada.  So far so good.  The Hamburger Haven was a haven/safe place for crappy burgers to be prepared and served. The burgers were unpleasant enough to be considered acts of terrorism.  They were like IEDs that exploded and filled my mouth with dry, intense disappointment

It should be noted that the same folks that own and operate Hamburger Habit were also behind the war crimes committed at Hamburger Haven.  If you will recall--Hamburger Habit was weak and crappy.  These cats were consistent.

The burgers started off their lives as pre-formed, flat, pinkish gray, but mottled with greenish brown (see the photo) pucks.  They were cooked in a clean kitchen on a well-seasoned griddle, which imparted a nice sear to the burger.  The buns were toasted, which was a nice touch.

HOWEVER--the beef was unseasoned and overcooked. The fat content was low, so the burger came out dry. The bland cheese was sliced thin enough to read through, so don't expect any moisture or flavor to come from that.  The bun--well, the bun was freaking HUGE and dry.  So, what I got was a big, bland, dry cheeseburger and the realization that the sign outside was terrorist propaganda.

The fries were GD good, though.

Burger Review :  If you eat this burger, the terrorists win.

Rating...1 Bite

The Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel -- Beverly Hills, CA

9641 Sunset Blvd
Beverly Hills, CA
90210

Heads up--this was a $22 burger at a pretty posh joint, so it was going to be a great burger, right?  Wrong and busted--this burger sucked.

The surroundings were great--hot girls, hot cars, sweet hotel.  Too bad the burger was weak and way too expensive.

It was flavorless, rubbery, thin, underseared, over-cooked, under-seasoned, and utterly worthless. The bun was completely uninteresting.  This this was just a big PASS.

Burger Review :  Eff them for charging 22 bucks for bad food.

Rating...1 Bite