Shake it up

So there I was the other day thinking to myself, “Self, you know what? You haven’t had a good test of your gastrointestinal tract since you had that boilermaker for Christmas breakfast back in 2008.”

So I pulled into the Burger King parking lot and went inside and ordered a Lucky Charms shake.

Growing up I liked Lucky Charms. Mom almost never bought them. But when she did, we kids always ate the marshmallows, but left the cereal behind and drank all the milk.

But I was suspicious about this shake.

“Does it have marshmallows?” I asked.

The nice lady behind the counter said it did.

“Little ones,” she said.

It also had little bits of cereal.

The nice lady behind the counter asked me if I wanted whipped cream on top of it.

I said no.

Then she mixed up my shake and handed it to me.

$3.49.

I sucked half it down on the short drive from Burger King to the office. At first it was pretty good. But about halfway through, I was getting lightheaded from all the sugar. It was the opposite of eating a bowl of Lucky Charms — with the shake, the milk was on top but the cereal sunk and made a sludge on the bottom.

I couldn’t take any more sugar, so I went home and fed the rest to the dog. She lapped it up like gravy.

The shake is a meal in itself. According to the Burger King website, the shake has 105 grams of sugar, 700 calories and 9 grams of saturated fat.

To put that in perspective, a teaspoon of sugar has four grams, so the shake, which isn’t all that big, has more than 26 teaspoons of sugar.

Now that’s what I call a Whopper of a shake. All puns intended.

Burger King also offers a Fruit Loops shake. I won’t be trying that anytime soon. In fact, I think I’d rather have a boilermaker for breakfast.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.