C'mon, One Won't Hurt!

Over the past decade, Subway has gained a reputation as a fast food restaurant that... isn't. The fast food place that you can actually eat at and have a reasonable chance of eating healthy. The restaurant Jared Fogle ate at, and of which they've said since 2000. Subway: Eat Fresh. As seen on The Biggest Loser. Everywhere you look, there are healthy options. Instead of the cheese, have some lettuce. Instead of that root beer, have some lemonade. Or milk. Instead of those Doritos, have some Sun Chips. Or don't have any chips. Have some apple slices.

But then you hit the cash register, and amongst all this potentially healthy food, there they sit.

Cookies.



Oh yes. Yes, they will. According to Calorie Count, the, well, calorie count of Subway's various cookies reads as follows:

Peanut butter: 220
Sugar: 220
White macadamia nut: 220
Chocolate chip: 210
Double chocolate: 210
M&M: 210
Chocolate chunk: 200
Oatmeal raisin: 200

By comparison, the turkey breast wrap pulls down only 190 calories.

As several Subway sandwiches are (properly) advertised as having 6 grams or less of fat, one sugar cookie has 6 grams of saturated fat, never mind the overall, which stands at 12. The peanut butter cookie has 16 grams of sugar; the 6-inch cold cut combo has 8. Just about any wrap has fewer carbs than just about any cookie- the oatmeal raisin, for instance, has 30 total carbs, while the tuna wrap has only 16.

Just to remind you, we're comparing a single cookie to six inches worth of sandwich.

Subway is privately owned and doesn't release sales figures, so there's no information available on how many cookies- or how much of any other item- are sold in a given period. The fact that the cookies have remained on the menu for so long, though, surviving all those years of healthy-eating efforts, suggests a substantial amount of cookie sales.

How much fatter does America get from just those cookies? How many collective pounds could consumers shed just by cutting them out? Just by skipping that cookie at the register?

Subway did not respond to an e-mail asking for an explanation.