Hardee's gives breakfast 920 calories, 60 fat grams

ST. LOUIS — The people who brought you the Monster Thickburger and the 1,100-calorie salad are at it again — this time for breakfast.

Hardee's on Monday rolled out its new Country Breakfast Burrito — two omelets filled with bacon, sausage, diced ham, cheddar cheese, hash browns and sausage gravy, all wrapped inside a flour tortilla. The burrito contains 920 calories and 60 grams of fat.

Brad Haley, marketing chief for the St. Louis-based fast-food chain, said the burrito offers the sort of big breakfast item normally found in sit-down restaurants, yet it's portable.

In 2003 the chain introduced a line of big sandwiches, including the Monster Thickburger. The 1,420-calorie sandwich is made of two 1/3-pound slabs of beef, four strips of bacon, three slices of cheese and mayonnaise on a buttered bun.

Even Hardees' chicken salad — topped with onion rings and chicken — has 1,100 calories and 83 grams of fat.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based advocate for nutrition and health, has called the Hardee's line of Thickburgers "food porn."

The group's senior nutritionist, Jayne Hurley, said Monday the burrito was "another lousy invention."

The "country breakfast bomb," as she called it, represents half a day's calories and a full day's worth of saturated fat and salt, plus cholesterol.