Viral fast-food casserole 'for kids' is over 7,000 calories with layers of nuggets and fries

A woman has gone viral on social media for sharing a fast-food casserole she describes as a “yummy little snack” for kids that we estimate contains more than 7,000 calories.

Eating healthily for every meal can admittedly be tough to accomplish, especially given time and budgetary constraints many of us face, but viewers who have seen the viral video in question have been left shocked at the culinary work on display.

Video shows woman preparing ‘fast-food casserole’

Originally posted by She’ll Try Anything on Facebook, the video has since spread across social media and there are numerous videos on Instagram of creators reacting to the recipe.

The video begins with the woman emptying two large portions of McDonald’s fries into a metal food tray that has been lined with tortilla wraps.

She then covers the base layer of fries with a generous helping of macaroni cheese before emptying a full bag of chicken nuggets onto the growing pile of food.

On goes another portion of fries before a full bag of tater tots is added to the mix. After they have been distributed across the calorific casserole, she then places six slices of American cheese on top.

While taking the plastic wrappers off the cheese slices, the woman addresses who this dish is for: “I make this for… children!” she says. “Because it’s such a yummy little snack for them.”

“Honestly, it’s a good way of getting them to get all their protein in, get good calcium from the cheese, this is one of my absolute favorites,” she adds.

The woman then completes the dish by encasing the mixture in more tortillas, adding a layer of four-cheese pasta sauce and then another layer of grated cheese on top before putting it in the oven.

Estimated calories in the ‘yummy little snack’

In an effort to estimate the rough calorie count of the fast-food casserole, The Focus has researched the nutritional value of each of the food products the woman has used in the video.

Without knowing the exact quantities of certain ingredients* in the recipe, we can’t get an exact figure, hence why this is only an estimate.

This means the total estimated calorie count of this recipe comes to an eye-widening 7,414 calories.

It should be noted that in the video, the woman does cut the fast-food casserole into 12 pieces, meaning this would equate to 617 calories in each slice.

According to the National Library of Medicine, an adult man should eat 2,500 calories per day to maintain body weight while an adult woman should eat 2,000 per day. In one slice of this “yummy little snack,” there is 24.7% of a man’s recommended calorie intake and 30.9% of a woman’s daily calorie intake.

Of course, calories aren’t the only nutritional detail you need to look out for in food. We’ve also estimated that the dish includes around 106g of saturated fat.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans laid out by the Department of Health and Human Services says that men should not consume more than 30g of saturated fat per day, while for women it’s 22g.

For one slice, which contains around 8.8g of saturated fat, this equates to 29% of a man’s daily recommendation and 40% of a woman’s.

Social media reacts

It’s safe to say that the video from She’ll Try Anything has sparked quite a reaction from viewers on social media.

Commenting on a version of the video posted to Instagram, one person joked: “I just gained 10 pounds watching this.”

While another added. “Getting your calcium from this is as healthy as getting your iron from being beaten with a hammer.”

“Tell me you are American without telling me you are American,” said a third.

A fourth simply asked: “That’s a ‘little snack’??”

“Maybe we don’t deserve free healthcare,” said a fifth.

And finally, this commenter wrote: “’Yummy little snack?’ That is not yummy, not little and definitely not a snack.”