A Ton Of Fun Without The Bun

Kentucky Fried Chicken has introduced a new sandwich called the Double Down. If you haven’t seen this, it’s two fried chicken fillets with bacon and cheese in between. That’s right, no bun. It is 540 calories and contains 32 grams of fat and 1,380 milligrams of sodium. That is more than half your daily recommended value of fat and sodium in a single sandwich. Seems like a real time saver to me. You get all that fat and sodium in with one meal and you have more time to work out, am I right?

I should point out here that these values vary slightly if you choose the grilled chicken version over the fried chicken. However, let’s be honest. If you are even considering eating this sandwich, the nutritional numbers are of no concern to you. Fried or grilled is all about your taste preference.

Anyway, I think this sandwich is remarkable. I haven’t tried it, so I’m not talking about a flavor level. I’m talking about ingenuity. Whoever developed this thing has thought outside the box. They refused to be reigned in by the widely accepted constraints of standard sandwich construction. They said, “Bread? Who needs bread?” and they were right. Nobody eats a sandwich for the bread. You eat the sandwich for what’s inside. So, why not take what’s inside and make the whole thing out of it. If you already know what you like, why waste those calories on something you don’t?

I’m somewhat jealous. Fifteen plus years ago, I had a radical sandwich idea myself. At the time, I was eating deli meat sandwiches fairly regularly. I would try to get some variety: salami, ham, turkey, roast beef. Occasionally, I would have a cold meatloaf sandwich. That’s when it hit me. When cold, meatloaf really does have a bread-like consistency. Why not take two slices of meatloaf and put the cold cuts in the middle? Alas, I never marketed the idea and now someone has gone above and beyond in sandwich making trends. For that, I salute them.

To all those out there who would argue that this sandwich is unhealthy, disgusting or a heart attack waiting to happen, you may be right. However, this sandwich represents something more. It gives us the freedom to choose what we want on either side of our fattening contents. If we choose that to be more fattening ingredients, so be it. That is the choice of each and every individual.

What more could you want from a sandwich, I ask? Freedom to choose, ingenuity, protein, over-indulgence and obesity; it’s all there. All the things that made this country great are wrapped up in a single saturated fat and sodium laden sandwich.

I say this sandwich doesn’t just ooze cheese and bacon and chicken grease. It oozes America.