Fast food items ranked by how many times I've had them

I've written about fast food here before, and I'll probably write about it again, but for now I'm here to kick off your week with something everyone loves: a list! But I'm not foolish enough to rank fast food menu items outright ... yet. Instead, here is a rough guesstimate or approximation of which fast food items I've probably crammed inside myself the most in my lifetime.

I recommend you try not to similarly approximate how much fast food you yourself have consumed in your years on this Earth unless you are prepared to reckon with a dark night of the soul. Learn from my folly!

NOTE: French fries don't count in this ranking. Obviously, the answer is french fries. Get serious.

No. 1: Chicken Nuggets

Obviously, McDonald's' Chicken McNuggets are the main showcase here, but I also have to give a shout-out to a major chicken nugget staple of my childhood, Kentucky Fried Chicken. For those who don't remember (or weren't around), Kentucky Fried Chicken (long before it was known exclusively by the acronym KFC) introduced "Kentucky Nuggets" in the mid-1980s that were diabolically good; they were essentially bite-sized and boneless versions of their "original recipe" chicken (which was my preferred KFC form factor at the time). This predated their popcorn chicken in the early 1990s, which was an entirely different beast, obviously, and more aimed toward crispy chicken fans.

I've never been the biggest fan of the actual hamburgers at McDonald's, but I've always adored the nuggets. Still, be it KFC or McDonald's, I'm no stranger to taking 20 nugs to the dome while staring vacantly into the middle distance. (But the nuggets at Burger King and the "chicken stars" at Carl's Jr. are absolute garbage.)

No. 2: Carl's Jr. Hamburgers

As an adult, Carl's Jr.'s Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger is pretty much my favorite fast food hamburger, full stop, but Carl's Jr. (Hardee's to those of you in the East) has always been a fixture not only for me, but for my family.

In my hometown, there was a Carl's Jr. franchise pretty close to my house, and every Sunday when I was a kid, they ran a special deal: 25-cent hamburgers, all day. My family took full advantage of this, rolling in after church and slapping down a five or a ten and walking out with bags full of burgs, which we'd stash in the fridge after eating our fill and then eat for the next day or two (usually cold, but that was still plenty good enough for us). Unfortunately, after about a year of my father, grandmother, my sister and I (and occasionally some other friends or family) took such advantage of the spirit of the promotion – every single week – that the banner on the outside of the building eventually bore an addendum: "25 cent hamburgers on Sundays – LIMIT FOUR PER FAMILY, PER DAY." The specificity of "PER FAMILY," combined with the looks that management gave us prior to the sign alteration, made it pretty clear: my family was directly responsible for Carl's Jr. having to change their hamburger policy.

It remains one of the proudest achievements of my life.

No. 3: Taco Bell tacos

Granted, the numbers here are juiced by my having co-created and hosted (and willingly participated in) the internet's premier Taco Bell eating contest, but I've housed my share of tacos from the Bell apart from all of that.

I didn't eat Mexican food at all from the time I was six (when my favorite Mexican restaurant in my hometown, Peppy Taco, shut down) until I was in my mid-20s (when I found myself suddenly taking a girl I liked to Taco Bell, which I'd never eaten at before). But I made up for lost time in a couple of ways. Firstly, I had a span of a few years where the only fast food I allowed myself was Taco Bell. I usually got a chicken quesadilla meal, but that came with a taco. Heck, all of the meals come with a taco, which really boosts its numbers in this ranking. One of the times I lived in San Francisco, the closest Taco Bell ran a weekly deal (surprisingly, not on Tuesdays) where you could get three tacos for really cheap, or maybe five tacos for really cheap? I don't really remember, but the main thing I remember is on the second or third week that my roommates and I popped in, I had an extended argument with the cashier when they told me that soft-shell (flour) tacos cost more than hard-shell (corn) tacos. I still don't really follow that one, to be honest.

No. 4: Jack In The Box's Ultimate Cheeseburger

The Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger also counts here. Just gonna drop this for you.

No. 5: Fast food breakfast sandwiches (see below)

Breakfast sandwiches at fast food establishments are a blessing; a gift that might just prove the existence of a higher being. The counterpoint to that argument is how diabolically bad the breakfast sandwiches are at Jack in the Box, a fast food establishment that is top tier but somehow has the absolute worst before-11-o'clock offerings of any of its peers.

My ranking of fast food breakfast sandwiches:

1. Carl's Jr. breakfast burger
2. Burger King sausage and bacon double Croissanwich
3. McDonald's sausage egg McMuffin
4. McDonald's sausage McGriddle
5. I dunno, people really seem to like biscuit sandwiches but all of the non-Chick-fil-A ones are way drier and have a way worse mouthfeel than any English muffin options, and I'm not going to put Chick-fil-A on this list. So uh ... McDonald's bacon egg and cheese biscuit, I guess.