Home › Nutrition › Calories

McDonald’s Big Breakfast Followup

By Andrew

Aug 22, 2010, Updated Jul 26, 2016

Recently I posted about a McDonald’s billboard that promotes the “Big Breakfast with Hotcakes.”

I asked all of you to guess how many calories it contained.  Scott was the only one willing to take a stab at it.

He was right on the mark for calories and fat, though he left off the syrup and butter… which are not insignificant.

His guess for sodium — 90 grams — made me chuckle.  That’s about 1/5 of a pound.

Nice work, Scott!  Thanks for playing.

Here’s the full rundown:

McDonald’s “Big Breakfast with Hotcakes” (Regular-size biscuit):

1,090 calories – 19 grams saturated fat – 56 grams fat – 2,150 mg sodium – 111 grams carbohydrates – 6 grams fiber – 17 grams sugars.

McDonald’s “Hotcake Syrup” (1 package)
(gee, they don’t even use the word “Maple”):

180 calories – 20 mg sodium – 45 grams carbohydrates – 32 grams sugars.

McDonald’s “Whipped Margarine” (1 pat)
(gee, they don’t even use the word “Butter”):

40 calories – 1.5 grams saturated fat – 4.5 grams total fat – 55mg sodium.

So, drumroll please… The grand total of everything pictured on that billboard:

1,310 calories – 20.5 grams saturated fat – 60.5 grams total fat – 2,225 mg sodium – 156 grams carbohydrates – 6 grams fiber – 49 grams sugars.

To put that in perspective, that’s around 2/3 of a day’s calories, an entire day’s fat (both saturated and otherwise), an entire day’s sodium, an entire day’s carbs, and an entire day’s “discretionary” sugar calories.

But not to worry, at least it’s low in one thing:  It has only about 1/5 of your day’s minimum fiber.