When we first moved in to this house, I was ravenous after unpacking for several hours and walked up the street to the nearest place to procure food, Pizza Pizza. Waiting in line before me was a woman dolled up in a 3/4 length leather coat and stiletto heels, deliberating over the merits of onions rings versus fries. Faced with this tough decision, she asked of the cashier, “Which is healthier?” to which he replied, “I don’t know, they’re both deep fried.” She shrugged her shoulders and chose the onion rings.

That was three months ago now and I’m still thinking about the encounter. No, honey, not because of the woman, but because I’m a little weird about food. I wanted to instinctively chime in and insist that the fries were a better option, but it seemed out of place. So instead, I came home and did a Google search of “fries vs onion rings”. There are around 3.68 million results for such a search, so clearly she isn’t the only one confused by this dilemma. After reading a couple of pages of the oh-so thoughtful answers given on message boards, I thought I’d do my own analysis. Yes, it took me a couple of months to get around to it, but I’ve been busy.

Potato vs Onion

The best place to start, I figure, is to compare eating a potato versus eating an onion outright. Obviously, neither are particularly palatable in their raw state, but it’s something to work with. So here it is, 1000g (one kilogram) of potato versus one kilogram of onions. Yes, that is a ridiculous amount (about 2.2 pounds), but it’s easier to compare nutritional properties on a magnified scale. I rounded some things off because I like even numbers, and because nutritional analysis isn’t 100% accurate anyway, so my representation of the numbers isn’t incredibly important except for comparative reference.

Potato

1,036 calories
24g fat (4.6g saturated)
194g carbohydrates
17g fiber
16g protein

Nutritional Highlights

200% B6
175% copper
100% B5
75% B1 and B3
50% iron, magnesium, magnaese and potassium
25% zinc
170% of the RDA for sodium

Onion

400 calories
1g fat (0.4g saturated)
93g carbohydrates
17g fiber
11g protein

Nutritional Highlights

92% B6
82% Vitamin C
40% copper
40% B1
25% B3, B5, iron, magnesium, potassium and calcium
15% zinc
3% of the RDA for sodium

The potato has roughly 2.5 times more calories and 23g more fat, as well as a whopping amount of naturally occurring sodium. It would seem that the onion wins hands down, if you were to eat it straight from the pantry as a not-so tasty snack.

Source: Fitday.com

Deep Frying

Deep frying does not necessarily have to be as unhealthful as is automatically implied. Done properly, deep frying is a means of quickly displacing moisture from the surface of food, which forms a crispy coating, not only making food taste better, but actually preventing fat absorption into it. The temperature and quality of the fat used to fry is critical to ensure that this happens however. It is not that simple, but generally speaking, if deep-fried food is greasy, it has not been fried in optimal conditions. On top of this, industrialized processing methods have made deep-fried foods in fast food establishments extremely unhealthy, as the techniques used for both fries and onion rings basically sap both the potatoes and onions of their nutritional content and load them with preservatives and sodium. In case it wasn’t obvious, the fries versus onion rings debate is purely a matter of choosing the lesser evil.

Potato

When making a French fry from a fresh potato, there are a lot of variables to consider. How thickly the potato is cut will drastically effect how quickly it is cooked and how much oil it can absorb. It is not uncommon for fast food establishments to batter their fries to make them even crispier, and include dozens of other ingredients for preservation, flavor or texture. All you really need to make fries is oil, potatoes and salt. Generally, fries are blanched first (in oil) to cook them through, and then cooked a second time at a higher temperature to crisp the outside. Since the crust from the oil is created afterward, this still allows for a fair quantity of oil to be absorbed. The less crispy the fry, the more likely it is that it has absorbed a lot of oil.

Onion

Onion rings are always battered, and from a deep frying standpoint, batter is just a sponge for oil. Generally speaking, the more batter you get with your onion ring, the less ‘healthy’ it will be. Onion ring batter is basically guaranteed to contain absolutely nothing nutritious, and since onion rings typically arrive frozen and pre-blanched, just like fries, they have an even more increased likelihood to absorb oil on top of the deep frying method before it is served to you.

If you were to make fries and onion rings at home and compare them, the deep frying of the potatoes would add a negligible amount of oil in comparison to the onion rings. The onion rings also add nutritionally deficit calories from the batter itself. After accounting for this, the deep-fried battering of the onion rings more than counters the extra calories by weight in the comparison of a raw potato to a raw onion. Since potatoes are comprised primarily of starch and onions contain a higher proportion of sugars, the potatoes will fill you up faster. In theory, anyway.

Fast Food Comparisons

Since there are so many variables to consider, let’s just compare a few of the more popular fast food chains to see whether the French fries or onion rings will come out on top. Fast food menus are sometimes purposefully misleading, displaying nutritional information for a quantity smaller than the serving given. Since fries and onion rings come in different serving sizes, we’ll have to break it down gram for gram to determine a winner here. For instance, a large Burger King fries is a 147g portion, whereas their large onion rings are only 108g. Looking at the nutritional information, the onion rings seem like a better choice because they are 380 calories versus 440 calories for the fries, but you also get less onion rings than you do fries.

A&W

Fries: 3.059 calories per gram
Onion rings: 3.133 calories per gram

Arby’s

Fries: 2.99 calories per gram
Curly fries: 3.184 calories per gram
Onion petals: 3.31 calories per gram

Burger King

Fries: 2.99 calories per gram
Onion rings: 3.518 calories per gram

Dairy Queen

Fries: 2.689 calories per gram
Onion rings: 3.186 calories per gram

McDonald’s

Fries: 3.246 calories per gram
Onion rings: N/A

Wendy’s

Fries: 2.947 calories per gram
Onion rings: N/A

As you can see from this list, the fries are the healthier option, if there is the option available to you. Arby’s is an interesting example, because the curly fries, even while battered, are still the better option than the onion ‘petals’, which absorb even more oil than a standard onion ring. The fries consistently contain more sodium per serving than the onion rings, but honestly, if you’re concerned about your sodium, you probably shouldn’t be eating either option.

For those of you that may be wondering at this point whether or not the fries or onion rings are a healthier option at Pizza Pizza, my answer for you is… I don’t know. I think it is still safe to assume that the fries would be, but their website doesn’t list the nutritional information of their items. What I can tell you though, is that their oil is trans fat free, which is something that a lot of fast food establishments have yet to make the switch from, despite the widespread agreement that it should basically be verboten for health reasons. Don’t be afraid to ask!