Why sodium is the number nobody checks
Calories get all the attention, but sodium is where fast food is genuinely extreme. The World Health Organization suggests staying under 2,000 mg a day for adults. A burger with fries and a drink can carry most of that on its own, and a large burrito or a fried chicken sandwich can pass it outright before you've eaten anything else. The reason it slips past you is that fast food doesn't taste salty in the way crisps do; the salt sits inside the bun, the sauce, the marinade and the seasoning on the fries.
Where the sugar actually hides
Most of the added sugar in a fast food order isn't in the food, it's in the cup. A large regular soda sits around 70 to 80 grams, and a milkshake can pass 60. The WHO suggests keeping added sugars under roughly 50 grams a day and notes further benefit below 25. Switch the drink and the sugar bar above drops further than almost any other change you could make to the same order, which is worth knowing if you're cutting down rather than quitting outright.
Reference values, not rules about you
The percentages here compare your order to published daily reference values: 2,000 mg of sodium, about 50 g of added sugar, and roughly 22 g of saturated fat on a 2,000-calorie intake. Those are population-level guidelines, not personal targets. Your needs may be different, and a single order over the line isn't a health event. What the numbers are useful for is seeing the shape of a habit: three orders a week is a very different exposure from three a month, and the yearly figure above makes that difference visible.
What the research does and doesn't say
Diets high in sodium, added sugar and ultra-processed food are consistently associated at population level with higher blood pressure and higher cardiovascular risk. Those are associations across large groups, not predictions about any individual, and they don't tell you what will happen to you. Anyone with a specific concern about blood pressure, cholesterol or anything else should be talking to a doctor rather than a calculator. What's genuinely under your control is frequency, and that's what this page is for.
Knowing the number is the easy part
Seeing that your usual order carries a day and a half of sodium is motivating for about a day. The hard part arrives at 6 PM on a tired Tuesday, when the craving does the deciding and the drive-thru is right there. If you want to understand why that moment feels so automatic, read the science of the craving loop. You can also see the money side of the same habit with the cost calculator, or the energy side with the calorie calculator.
How do I actually cut down?
Willpower rarely lasts, because the craving shows up exactly when your willpower is lowest. That's the problem NOPE was built for: it runs quietly on your iPhone, warns you when you're near a spot that tempts you, and gives you a way through the two minutes that decide everything. Every clean day it tracks is exposure you didn't take on.