Love Living in a Test Market

There’s something special about the area I live in that makes companies want to use us as a test market. Case in point Wendy’s. I was in my super-mom rush to get home from the grocery store and hadn’t eaten since sweating off several pints of liquid at the gym. Parched and famished I pull into Wendy’s and fall sucker to bright blitzy ads. TRY OUR NEW WRAPS!! says the sign to my left, the sign on the window, the big writing on the menu board.

Hmm, thought I. That might do the trick. I certainly know better than to order anything burger for fear I’d be eating a days worth of calories, and I don’t get fries because my arteries are having a hard enough time. So this wrap, like a beacon of light totally obliterates my idea of getting a lonely grilled chicken sandwich.

So I have my choice between:Smokehouse BBQ Wrap and the Baja Wrap. As a lover of most things spicy, I choose the Baja Wrap with cilantro lime sauce, pico de gaillo, chicken, lettuce, and a fresh looking really yummy tortilla.

Fast forward to getting home, sitting here at the desk and enjoying every delightful bite of this wrapped scrumptiousness! Mmm, the tortilla is tender and fresh, the lettuces crisp and bountiful, the tomatoes have just the right spice, and the cilantro lime sauce is a pleasant undercurrent of flavor. Enter the chicken. I was slightly disappointed that the chicken was battered and fried, but the entire thing was just so darn good that I didn’t care.

So let me check the nutritional info on this, thought I. Being a test product, Wendy’s website doesn’t show the nutritional information. However, I found a website where a fellow claimed to have called Wendy’s hotline to get the nutritionals on these wraps. Umm…hold on tight, here are the numbers:

Smokehouse BBQ wrap has 57 grams fat, 1070 calories & 4 grams of fiber. The Baja Wrap has 48 grams of fat, 860 calories, 4 grams of fiber.

I just about clearly fell off my chair. The sodium isn’t listed but we all know that that will also be sky-high. So, in one meal I just had half my daily calories and most of my day’s worth of fat. That wrap isn’t sitting so well with me now, but I have no one to blame but myself. I KNOW better. Let this be a word from the not-always-wise: anything with sauce, be it smokey bbq sauce or cilantro lime sauce is going to be SCREAMING fat and sodium. The fried chicken thing is just a no brainer.

At $4.29 each, I’m feeling pretty dismayed. I could have had a few tablespoons of Crisco shortening for less, though it might not have tasted so good.

So now what, thought I. Now I must figure out a way to work in an extra workout into my day…jeeze, thanks Wendy’s!