Eat this, Not that: Dairy Queen burgers

Updated Jun 27, 2014
If possible, avoid Dairy Queen's Flamethrower burger and go for the Original Burger instead.

Classic treat eatery Dairy Queen also serves up quite the burger menu, along with several other lunch and dinner items. When picking up a DQ burger, though, keeping it simple – and avoiding the extras – is the key to keeping it healthy.

Eat this: Original Hamburger

Not that: Half-pound FlameThrower GrillBurger

Calories and Fat: The Original Burger has 350 calories and 14g of total fat, compared to the Flamethrower Grillburger’s whopping 1060 calories and 75g of total fat.

Difference: The half-pound FlameThrower registers off of the chart in total fat count, having more five times the amount of fat the Original has. Twenty-six of those grams of fat come from saturated fat, and two of them are from trans fat. The FlameThrower also has 1980mg of sodium and 165mg of cholesterol, compared to the Original’s 680mg and 65mg, respectively. And of the 1060 total calories in the FlameThrower, 680 are from fat – nearly twice the amount of total calories in the Original.

When going for a burger at Dairy Queen, stick with the classic, and if you feel a wild streak coming on, add a slice of cheese, which adds only 50 calories to the meal’s total.