Breakfast is the most truly American meal. People in other parts of the world don't shovel in the amount of calories and fat we do for the first meal of the day.

We are, after all, the nation that made Waffle House one of the icons of our culinary landscape.

Drive-Through Nutrition | Love Breakfast

My best friends are a French couple, and they are constantly amazed at the breakfasts they see in restaurants. However, in true melting pot fashion, they have grown to love a stack of pancakes with some sausage on the side -- and maybe a fried egg or two -- on Saturday mornings.

Of course, some of us content ourselves with a cup of yogurt, maybe half a bagel or a bran muffin. However, you need only look at the menu board at your nearest fast-food joint to see that when most of us break our fast, it's with a sledgehammer.

If you're going to give your arteries a high-test wakeup call, I'm going to equip you with some information as to which place offers the most taste for your money.

Each breakfast sandwich or burrito was evaluated for taste, appearance and ability to be eaten while wearing business attire without significantly increasing a dry-cleaning bill. A cumulative grade of A through F was given.

Sonic Breakfast Toaster Sandwich (sausage, egg and cheese): 620 calories, 42 grams fat, 340 mg cholesterol, 1380 mg sodium, 40 grams carbs
The Texas toast that forms the bread portion of the Sonic Toaster sandwiches is a marvel of culinary excess: an extra-thick slice of bread soaked with butter and then toasted to a golden brown.

This was certainly a good-looking sandwich, but the taste didn't quite follow through. The Texas toast was greasy, and the sausage, egg and cheese were lost in the middle of all that bread. What I could taste of the sausage was quite good, but it was drowned by its surroundings. It was completely drip-free while eating, making it good road food. That last helped bring it in at a B-.

Burger King Enormous Omelet Sandwich: 730 calories, 45 grams fat, 330 mg cholesterol, 1940 mg sodium, 44 grams carbs

The King leaves nothing to the imagination with the name of this monstrosity. He may be the creepiest mascot in the fast-food world, but at least he's honest.

This is one pretty sandwich. The seeded bun is a welcome change from the usual biscuits or toast, and the eggs and sausage peeking out around the edges make for a very appealing picture. However, that picture is also the problem. From the first bite, bits of the eggs and sausage will periodically detach and plummet toward your clothes. You will quickly find yourself dotted liberally with the kind of grease spots that make your dry cleaner happy he added the extra charge for spot removal.

The taste is average. The bacon mentioned in the product description was barely present and quite possibly of the precooked, ready-to-serve variety. The poor portability was a real problem and resulted in a final score of C+.

Jack In The Box Sirloin Steak and Egg Burrito: 786 calories, 48 grams fat, 450 mg cholesterol, 1319 mg sodium, 52 grams carbs

Anyone in the habit of chasing down grub in the wee hours knows that Jack In The Box tacos are the best hangover preventative around. Having tasted this burrito, I can say that it would be well worth your while to stick around until later in the morning.

This burrito reminded of something you would find at some of the more upscale Tex-Mex joints for a weekend brunch. You'll find sirloin steak, cheddar and pepperjack cheese and a chipotle sauce that really captures the smoky, slightly mellow heat of my favorite incarnation of the jalapeno. The optional fire-roasted tomato salsa is a bit too sweet, but the burrito shines just fine without it.

The tortilla deserves a separate mention here. The tortilla is a simple creation, but it is one of the most often mangled in the fast-food world. Whether they taste like wax or fall apart in your hand, many drive-through burritos aren't worth the flour they're made of. That was not the case here. The flour tortilla tasted fresh and had the perfect balance of tenderness and toughness that allowed it to hold the massive amount of ingredients while not being impossible to bite through.

The final grade here was a well-deserved A.

Hardee's Loaded Breakfast Burrito: 780 calories, 51 grams fat, 495 mg cholesterol, 1620 mg sodium, 38 grams carbs

Hardee's Monster Thickburger was a grim disappointment in the burger ratings, but the chain redeems itself with this thoroughly satisfying and very portable offering. Is it way more than you should be eating for breakfast? Unless your daily regime includes the Boston Marathon or bench-pressing farm animals, probably so.

However, the sausage has some spice, the ham and bacon add their notes well and the salsa actually has some spice. In my experience, when a fast-food joint calls something "salsa," what you get is lumpy ketchup. I could taste a bit of heat in this creature.

This was a close second to the Jack In The Box offering. Had the cheese been something other than the flavorless processed yellow plastic, it well could have won. Final grade: B+.

McDonald's McSkillet Burrito With Sausage: 610 calories, 36 grams fat, 410 mg cholesterol, 1390 mg sodium, 44 grams carbs

If I wanted an item that would serve as the exact polar opposite of everything that a good breakfast burrito should be, this pale, bland tube of lumpy potatoes, limp cheese and washed-out sausage would fit the bill perfectly. The skillet potatoes described on the tasty-looking poster at the drive-through had the consistency of spackle, and there really weren't any definable flavor notes beyond a bit of saltiness from the sausage.

The tortilla was clammy, with shreds of it actually coming loose and sticking to my hand like papier-mache while I ate. The final grade is a D, and that's because I was having a good morning.

The bottom line is that there are good drive-through breakfasts out there. However, when you add in the hash browns and maybe some orange juice or coffee with cream and sugar, you're flirting with 1,000 calories for breakfast and massive amounts of fat and cholesterol.

Is that really what you want to load into your system before you go sit at a desk all day? Once in a while is fine, but make a habit of these and you'll have your cardiologist on speed-dial before very long. Other Links:

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