Healthy Fast Food Guide | Wingstop | Detailed

3 min readJul 30, 2019

Overview

Generally, I’d recommend leaning into the plain wings or rubs instead of sauces to avoid empty calories. Rubs have more sodium, but not the artificial sugar from additives and nutritionless carbohydrates from the sauces. You can combat more sodium in the short-term with drinking more water, but it’s tougher to combat sugar.

Recommendations

These recommendations will be my opinion of the order from most healthy to least based on the nutrition facts alone (i.e. cholesterol, sodium, sugar).

4 boneless strips or 4 boneless wings or 4 regular wings

Plain Wings (or Atomic if you can handle the spiciness) are the best options because they’re high in protein and low in sodium & cholesterol relative to the other options. However, I get it…we don’t always want plain wings.

Thus, here are a couple of rubs and their tradeoffs compared to plain wings so you can choose which ones you prefer. I’ve ranked them from most healthful (#1) to least (#6):

Cajun — high in sodium, but same in cholesterol as plain and atomic so one of the better options behind the two
Original Hot — double the sodium of Cajun, but same in cholesterol
Mild — half as much sodium than original hot and Cajun, but double the fat. With this being unhealthy fats, I would rank this third behind Cajun and original hot
Garlic Parmesan — a quarter as much sodium as Cajun and original hot and half of mild, but higher in unhealthy fats than mild and more than double the fat of Cajun and original hot
Louisiana Rub — high in unhealthy fats and moderate sodium, but slightly better than lemon pepper, so ranks higher. These two are interchangeable on the standings because they’re about the same
Lemon Pepper — high in unhealthy fats and moderate sodium, so this ranks lower on the list

Carrot Sticks & Celery Sticks

Regardless of which type of wings you choose, pair them with carrot sticks & celery sticks as your side because these are the healthiest options available by far. Additionally, you can go pretty crazy with these because they’re low in carbohydrates and are very nutritious. If you’re hungry after the wings, request additional carrots and celery to fill you up.

The nutritional facts for boneless strips and wings are provided below as an instructional example of the differences in nutrition between fried and grilled chicken. These were not included above because regular wings are significantly healthier (e.g. less fat and fewer empty carbohydrates):

Boneless Strips