Egg White Breakfast Sandwiches: Inside The Popular Fast Food Menu Items

Battle Of The Egg White Breakfast Sandwiches
Brunch2McDonalds-March 16, 2006-Sunday Brunch trio of fast food breakfasts, this is the egg mcmuffin from mcdonalds, Thursday March 16, 2006. (Tannis Toohey / TORONTO STAR)tmt (Photo by Tannis Toohey/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
Brunch2McDonalds-March 16, 2006-Sunday Brunch trio of fast food breakfasts, this is the egg mcmuffin from mcdonalds, Thursday March 16, 2006. (Tannis Toohey / TORONTO STAR)tmt (Photo by Tannis Toohey/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

More people are eating fast food breakfasts now than ever. And although we at Healthy Living believe that a homemade healthy breakfast is the best, easiest way to get a nutritious start to the day, many people -- including some readers -- rely on food made outside the home in the morning hours.

Fast food restaurants know this and want to appeal to more health conscious customers, so they've been working on new breakfast items, including a trend in breakfast sandwiches featuring egg whites. In the latest example, on April 22, HuffPost reported, McDonald's introduced an egg-white only Egg McMuffin nationwide.

But are they actually healthier? On balance, the removed yolk wasn't enough to bring down sodium, saturated fat and processed ingredients. And some egg white sandwiches retained their bacon, cheese and oily parts. On the other hand, some of these offerings snuck in veggies and heart-healthy ingredients like whole grain bread and avocados.

Read on for five case studies -- sandwiches that bill themselves as healthier options (and sometimes live up to that) -- and tell us in the comments: Do you eat fast food breakfasts? Why or why not?

Starbucks' Turkey Bacon & White Cheddar Classic Breakfast Sandwich

Egg White Breakfast Sandwiches

Correction: An earlier version of this story referred to saturated fat in the turkey bacon used in McDonald's Egg White Delight, when in fact it does not contain saturated fat. We regret the error.

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