Subway vs McDonalds: The artery clogging truth about our favourite fast food chain
Now, I’m no food snob. Far from it, in fact. My favourite comfort food is canned pilchards on toast with a cup of strong tea, and I like nothing better than a fry-up in a proper greasy-spoon cafe.
But I have just had one of the most revolting, depressing culinary experiences of my life: I’ve been to my local branch of Subway.
Subway is the sandwich chain that has just announced it is the biggest fast-food franchise in the world.
On January 1, Subway had 33,749 stores across the globe, spokesman Les Winograd said, surpassing the reported McDonald’s 32,737 outlets. In the UK, there are 1,500 outlets across the country, compared with 1,197 for McDonald’s.
There’s almost certainly a Subway on your High Street. And if there’s not, you can bet there’s one on its way — the chain has been expanding at a rate of six branches a week.
For those who have yet to encounter it, Subway’s basic food is ‘subs’ — long, American-style ‘submarine’ sandwiches, a bit like baguettes, but made with soft bread.
In theory, so far so good — after all, you can choose your length of sub (6in or 12in) and there’s also a selection of breads, from oat and honey to Italian herb and wheat.
When it comes to fillings, you can either go for one of their suggestions, such as the Italian BMT (big, meaty and tasty) or the Meatball Marinara (meatballs, tomato sauce and cheese), or you can choose from various sliced meat options, a vegetarian version or tuna.
You may add as many salad ingredients as you like, a sauce of your choice, as well as cheese.
Subway’s slogan is ‘Eat fresh’ and it prides itself on providing ‘healthy’ fast food. It boasts it works with a fully qualified dietitian, Juliette Kellow — a former editor of Slimming magazine — to reduce fat and salt content in its offerings.
It works closely with Heart Research UK and has even been involved with the Government’s Food Network to promote healthier eating.
In theory, then, it sounds not only tastier, but healthier than McDonald’s or other fast-food options. Or so I thought, until I visited Subway for the first time. The truth, as I experienced it, was so very different from the healthy, fresh picture Subway paints of itself that it would be laughable, were it not so shocking.
Top of the shops: Subway has powered into first place in the fast-food league, with 1,500 outlets in Britain alone compared to McDonald's 1,197
Walking into the store, the first thing that hit me was the stench: a combination of processed meat, dried herbs and melted processed cheese. Greasy, the smell of cheap, ‘fake’ food.
Bright posters everywhere encouraged me to buy a foot-long sandwich for just £2 more than the basic price (around £3.50 for a 6in sub) and to add crisps and a fizzy drinks plus a doughnut, cookie or nachos.
Nowhere could I see any mention of healthy food — though there was a huge photograph on the wall of a highly unappetising collection of processed meat blocks that looked like dog food.
The chilled counter contained the most unappetising collection of ingredients I have ever seen. Sorry-looking lettuce, plasticky olive slices and an assortment of chopped meat that was almost unidentifiable.
I asked what a pile of brown circles was. They looked like leather patches that belonged with a cobbler. ‘That’s beef,’ said the server.
Some brownish slithers? Steak. Brightly coloured pebbles? Chicken tikka. I laughed as I pointed at a pink rectangular slab that looked like Plasticine.
‘That’s our vegetarian cutlet,’ she told me. ‘It’s very good.’ (Well, it is described on the Subway website as a ‘wholesome slice of goodness.’)
The Subway website states most of the meat is reformed — which basically means scraps of meat compressed and made into slices with water and often a host of additives (those infamous Turkey Twizzlers were the ultimate in reformed meat).
I asked my server where Subway’s meat comes from. She asked a colleague. ‘It all comes from America,’ he declared.
In fact, the company has admitted sourcing its chicken and meat from ten different countries including Thailand, Uruguay, Germany, Denmark and the UK. The imported meat is frozen and can take at least a month to reach the UK.
So much for fresh.
In its defence, Subway says by ‘fresh’ it means that the sandwiches are freshly made in front of customer, not that the ingredients are fresh. It also says that, where possible, it sources meat from the UK. Not that its meat is 100 per cent meat: Subway told me its ham contains pork rear-leg meat, water, salt, stabilisers, dextrose (sugar), lactose, smoke flavouring, preservative and antioxidant. What goes into the flavouring, it did not divulge.
The chicken strips are made of chicken breast, sunflower oil, salt, potato starch (a thickener) and paprika.
One company that supplies the chain with processed meat is Dawn Farm Foods, in Co. Kildare (if you recognise the name it might be from the publicity they received over a salmonella outbreak in their factory a couple of years ago, which led to Subway having to remove some ingredients from its stores).
Although Dawn Farm does not list its ingredients on its website, and there was nobody available to talk to me, it does announce that, when it comes to processed meat, ‘If you can imagine it, we can make it happen’. The slogan is illustrated with slices of meat shaped like a pear and, erm, the Colosseum.
So far, so unappetising. But what about the end product?
Subway boasts that 49 per cent of the subs sold are from its range containing less than 3 per cent fat. That may be the case, but since customers are encouraged to add cheese and sauce (‘it’s free, so you might as well,’ I was told), which is not included in the nutritional data, who knows quite how fattening anyone’s final sandwich really is?
I opted for a meatball sub, and instantly regretted it. I was shocked by how utterly revolting it was, with hard, grey meatballs that tasted only of salt.
It left a nasty aftertaste and a film of grease on my teeth — lowest common denominator food at its most miserable. Perhaps I’d ordered badly.
Big, meaty... and unhealthy: The regular Subway BMT contains more than 20g of fat and nearly 3g of salt, but if you order the foot-long version you can double the amounts
Utterly revolting? Anne said the meatballs in this sub were grey and tasted only of salt - with the figures showing it contains 3.3g per serving
So I tried tuna with salad on an Italian herb sub — better than the meatballs, but made with substandard mayonnaise that gave it a bitter aftertaste — and a breaded chicken fillet on a toasted honey and oat sub, with cheese, salad, jalapeno chilli and chipotle dressing. This was better — the dressing, while almost fluorescent orange, was tasty, as were the jalapenos.
But the chicken was marshmallow soft and tasteless. The overall effect was a warm, spicy, salt-sweet sogginess — not unpleasant, but not something I’ll be repeating.
So, how healthy — or otherwise — are Subway’s offerings? According to the company’s figures, a 6in Meatball Marinara sub has 511 calories, 21g of fat, of which 9g is saturated, and 3.3g of salt. That’s 30 per cent less salty than it used to be, Subway boasts — but it is still the equivalent of six packets of Walkers ready salted crisps and more than half of an adult’s maximum daily recommended intake of salt. In fact, it has more calories and salt than a Big Mac.
The Italian BMT is slightly better, with 431 calories, 20.5g fat and 2.7g salt, but the Spicy Italian has a whopping 506 calories, with 29g of fat, almost 13g of it saturated, and 2.8g of salt.
All of those figures ignore the extra cheese and sauce. And remember, the foot-long version has double the calories, fat and salt, putting it into terrifyingly high figures.
Subway admits more than half of its customers go for the non-healthy options — yet it still claims to be the healthier fast-food chain.
Last night it said: ‘The Subway chain continues to be committed to the health and well-being of its customers and is continuing to develop new initiatives to promote healthier lifestyles.
‘It is working towards further reductions in salt, new healthier bread options will be tested, the chain is working closely with suppliers to develop meat products with reduced fat and it will use posters in stores to communicate healthy lifestyle messages to customers.’
As I left the store, a teenager walked in wearing her sports kit, from one of the local private schools. ‘I’ll have a foot-long vegetarian patty with cheese and ranch sauce,’ she said.
In other words, 900 calories, 25g of fat and 4.4g of salt in edible Plasticine form.
I wanted to drag her out by her hair and yell at her that if she really cared about keeping fit, she should get down to McDonald’s instead.
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