Top 10 Worst Fast Food Meals

Call it calorie sticker-shock, and that's exactly where we'll be when all fast food restaurants are forced by federal law to post calorie information on their menus.

Before the new regulations take effect in 2011, The Daily Beast offered a preview by ranking 40 fast-food standards and classics based on which are worst for your health. They measured each food item's calories, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium and sugar.

So you can really understand just how unhealthy these foods are, here are the recommended daily calorie counts. Saturated fat should be less than 7 percent of your total daily calorie intake.

• Men: 2,500 calories
• Women: 2,000 calories
• Children ages 5 to 10: 1,800 calories
• Toddlers: 1,300 calories

The top 10 deadliest fast food meals:

1. Wendy's Baconator Triple, 1330 calories and 38 grams of saturated fat
2. Sonic's SuperSonic Cheeseburger, 980 calories and 24 grams of saturated fat
3. Burger King's BK Quad Stacker, 930 calories and 28 grams of saturated fat
4. Domino's Bread Bowl Pizza, 670 calories and 22 grams of saturated fat
5. In & Out Burger's Double Double With Onion, 670 calories and 18 grams of saturated fat
6. Arby's Large Beef n' Cheddar, 650 calories and 11 grams of saturated fat
7. Popeye's Breast-Leg-Biscuit, 640 calories and 15.5 grams of saturated fat
8. Taco Bell's Chipotle Steak Taco Salad, 900 calories and 11 grams of saturated fat
9. White Castle's Sack of 4 Cheeseburgers, 680 calories and 16 grams of saturated fat
10. Jack in the Box's Jumbo Jack With Cheese, 620 calories, 15 grams of fat

Eating fast food can not only change your waistline from svelte to pudgy, but also change your personality! We now expect our food to be made and served fast, and this has led many of us to become extraordinarily impatient, according to a study from researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada. "Fast food represents a culture of time efficiency and instant gratification," study author Chen-Bo Zhong told LiveScience.com. "The problem is that the goal of saving time gets activated upon exposure to fast food regardless of whether time is a relevant factor in the context."

Here is an example: If you walk faster to get to a meeting on time, that is being efficient; but if you walk faster while you're supposed to be taking a leisurely stroll in the park, this is a sign of impatience.

It's this general sense of haste that fast food appears to promote. "Fast food is one of many technologies that allow us to save time," said study author Sanford DeVoe. "But the ironic thing is that by constantly reminding us of time efficiency, these technologies can lead us to feel much more impatience."

And while it's impossible to know if this is directly caused by our exposure to fast food or our culture's new emphasis and value on time efficiency, the fast food experience definitely reinforces an emphasis on impatience and instant gratification. The sad result? Leisure-time activities that are supposed to be relaxing can be spoiled by our impatience.

The study has been published in the journal Psychological Science.

--From the Editors at Netscape