Who Serves A Healthier Classic Soft Serve, Burger King Or Sonic?

A little fast food soft serve can be a perfect pick-me-up treat on a busy day, and Burger King and Sonic are both ready to help you out. While there is nothing wrong with a little ice cream, some people still might be wondering which one is healthier. In this case, different serving sizes made the comparison imperfect, but Burger King appears to be the narrowly better option when going off the vanilla soft serve cup.

The primary nutritional areas that are well worth evaluating are saturated and trans fat, sodium, and sugar, and Burger King's soft serve has just a little less than Sonic in three of them, while both have no trans fat. Neither chain lists the serving size by volume of their respective soft serve cups, so to make the comparison as fair as possible, we compared these nutrients based on an equivalent amount of 150 calories, as well as their full servings.

The area where the two chains' silky smooth soft serve ice cream was highest was obviously sugar. Burger King's soft serve cup has 22 grams, while Sonic's has 40 grams. But with one BK serving being only 180 calories and Sonic's larger cup being 300, they were much closer on a per-calorie basis. For 150 calories, Burger King has 18.26 grams, while Sonic has 20. For the full servings, Burger King's soft serve has 44% of your daily recommended added sugar, while Sonic's has 80%.

Since neither chain has trans fat in their soft serve, saturated fat is the main point of comparison for fat, and once again Burger King's vanilla has a little less than Sonic. For the full cups, Sonic will give you seven grams, while BK will give you only 3.5. But on that same calorie basis of 150, Sonic only has about 20% more than Burger King, at 3.5 grams to 2.9 grams. In both cases, this doesn't hit the same high levels as the sugar, with the full serving at Sonic being 35% of your daily value, and 18% at Burger King.

Neither chain has too much sodium in the soft serve either. Burger King's vanilla cup has 150 milligrams, or 125 per 150 calories, while Sonic has 300 milligrams, or 150 per 150 calories. That's only a small dent in the 2,300 milligram limit you should have each day.

On the more positive front, neither is going to give you any fiber, which probably isn't surprising, but being dairy, they are okay sources of protein. Sonic's full classic soft serve cup has seven grams, while Burger King's has four. That's 3.5 grams and 3.3 grams per 150 calories, respectively.

All in all, neither cup of vanilla soft serve is a huge issue, with only the sugar being on the high end. And even that isn't a problem when it comes to an occasional treat in a balanced diet. So stick to the fast food ice cream treat you prefer, and let those nutritional worries go for a bit.