7 Healthiest And 7 Unhealthiest Items On The Panera Menu

Panera Bread gives the illusion of being a healthy place to eat. Panera prides itself on using ingredients that are free from a selection of artificial preservatives, fake sweeteners, dyes, and artificial flavors that the chain has compiled onto a "no no" list. It says it sources its ingredients carefully, keeping sustainability and seasonality in mind. There are no deep fryers in a Panera kitchen. The menu is filled with salads and soups, items you reach for when you want something lighter and less greasy than what you'd get at the fast-casual chain next door.

However, that image of Panera being a super-healthy option isn't as honest as you'd hope. While, yes, you can probably eat a little better at Panera than you might at a burger spot, it all really comes down to the individual items you order. Panera has plenty of healthful options, but also items on its menu that are filled with sugar, sodium, fat, and calories. Here are some of the healthiest and unhealthiest items you can order at Panera Bread.

Panera's multigrain bagel flat, with its whole wheat, rye, seeds, and oats, is a smart choice for breakfast. Not familiar with the term "bagel flat"? It's basically a flattened bagel. A bagel flat is crispier than a normal bagel. There's not as much dense bagel fluff in the middle. Accordingly, any bagel flat is going to overall likely have fewer calories and carbs than a traditional bagel.

At Panera, this option comes with 180 calories, 3 grams of fat, and 460 milligrams of sodium. As such, it's the lowest-calorie bagel on the menu, and the bagel with the lowest amount of carbs, with about half the carbs you'll find in all your other options. It's also lower in sugar than any other bagel on the menu, with only 1 gram. However, for a multigrain bagel, you'd hope that this bagel flat would have more fiber; instead, it's not particularly high in fiber compared to your other Panera bagel options, tying with the cinnamon swirl raisin bagel at 3 grams.

Panera's cinnamon crunch bagel is a sugar rush waiting to happen. It packs in 33 grams of sugar. If that means nothing to you, consider that four grams of sugar is equal to one teaspoon. That means that eating a cinnamon crunch bagel at Panera is the equivalent of choking down eight teaspoons of sugar — and no one would willingly do that for breakfast. Additionally, the cinnamon crunch bagel is the highest-calorie bagel at the chain, at 420 calories, and it also contains 7 grams of fat and 82 grams of carbohydrates.

If you're sad that you're missing out on this bagel due to the sugar content, don't be. Reviewers on Reddit say that the bagel, once deemed iconic, has really fallen off in recent history. They describe it as "a cheap overly processed Little Debbie's cake" and "a high fructose corn syrup abomination." Perhaps Panera needs to bring back a once-loved bagel variety to take the cinnamon crunch bagel's place; Panera fans are desperate to see the French toast bagel return.

Despite all the criticism it receives, and even if it might not enjoy all the social media love that it once did, it seems like avocado toast is here to stay. Dunkin' Donuts serves avocado toast. Celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay eat avocado toast. And, yes, Panera Bread offers avocado toast, too. In fact, the avocado toast is one of the healthier breakfast options on the menu.

Simply sourdough bread spread with mashed avocado and sprinkled with everything bagel seasoning, this menu item contains 230 calories, 11 grams of fat, 250 milligrams of sodium, and 5 grams of fiber. It's the lowest-calorie breakfast option on the menu, with only the steel cut oatmeal with strawberries and cinnamon crunch topping coming close, at 260 calories per bowl. However, this oatmeal contains 16 grams of sugar, too, while the avocado toast has just 1 gram, giving the avocado toast the lead.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that, because something looks handcrafted and made with love rather than overly processed and made from frozen, that it's naturally healthy. This Panera breakfast sandwich looks lovely, with its shiny sausage, melty cheese, folded egg (no weirdly, perfectly round McDonald's Egg McMuffin eggs here!), and aioli-slathered bagel bun. However, it's hiding something sinister: a whole lotta sodium.

In each asiago sausage and egg sandwich, you'll find 1,470 milligrams of sodium. This means you're consuming right under the American Heart Association's recommended 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day, all at breakfast. Then, add on the 47 grams of fat, 790 calories, 345 milligrams of cholesterol, and middling 2 grams of fiber, and this might be a breakfast sandwich that you rethink. The one thing this sandwich does have going for it, is that it offers 32 grams of protein, making it the breakfast sandwich with the second-highest amount of protein on the menu, following the ciabatta Steak & Wake sandwich.

Oatmeal is frequently lauded as an excellent breakfast choice. It's heart healthy. It contains fiber. It has antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. It'll keep you full until lunch or even later. The steel cut oatmeal with strawberries and cinnamon at Panera reflects these benefits, while also being one of the lower-calorie options on the menu. Without the optional pecans, it's 260 calories; with, it's 370 calories. There are only 170 milligrams of sodium, whichever option you go with, though if you're watching your fat intake, you'll want to avoid the pecans, as they up the amount of fat from 4 grams to 14 grams. All the while, you'll get 6–7 grams of fiber, putting you well on your way to getting the 25 to 38 grams of fiber you should be eating per day. 

As mentioned, though, this oatmeal does come with 16–17 grams of sugar, which isn't ideal, as that's about four teaspoon's worth of sugar. But you could lower that amount of sugar by opting for the oatmeal without the cinnamon crunch topping.

Who can leave Panera without picking up a treat from the bakery case, whether you plan on eating it right away or saving it for later? Panera's kitchen sink cookie is decadent. Oversized, it's packed with two kinds of chocolate, caramel, and pretzel bits, and then all topped with sea salt.

While it might be a favorite, though, this cookie is one to enjoy in moderation. With 820 calories per cookie, it's not exactly a light snack. Additionally, the cookie comes with 44 grams of fat, including a gram of trans fat. Trans fat is the most harmful type of fat and, in fact, it's so dangerous that adding trans fat to foods and beverages is government-regulated. The World Health Organization furthermore estimates that nearly 300,000 deaths each year can be chalked up to eating trans fat from sources such as baked goods, fried foods, or margarine, as trans fat increases risks of heart attack and stroke. Then, there's the 56 grams of sugar in the cookie to think about, too.

Just because some bakery items at Panera are chockfull of sugar and fat, though, that doesn't mean that all of them are. The next time you're treating yourself, consider the macaroons — no, these aren't macarons, like the colorful French sandwich cookies. Instead, macaroons are light, coconut-filled cookies, and Panera offers two varieties, a classic coconut version and a chocolate version.

Both of these cookies contain only 180 to 190 calories each, as well as only 9 or 10 grams of fat, and no trans fat at all, as well as no cholesterol at all. They do have around 20 grams of sugar, but that's less than half of what you'd get if you were to eat the kitchen sink cookie. You even get a few grams of fiber thrown in there, and less than 100 milligrams of sodium. Do note that, if you're following a gluten-free diet, while traditional macarons are gluten-free, macaroons are not at Panera — a good reason to not get these two sweet treats mixed up.

Panera's Greek salad with chicken seems pretty simple and straightforward — and often, the more simple and straightforward a food, the less processed it is, and thus the healthier it is. But that's not the case here. With its Greek dressing, grilled chicken, feta, and olives, this salad brings a whole lot of sodium to the table, to the tune of 1,700 milligrams. That's more than is recommended you consume in an entire day, let alone in one single salad. If you remove the chicken from the salad, the sodium goes down to 1,130 milligrams, but that's still quite a lot. Additionally, the salad does contain trans fat, the most damaging of all fats, and 38 grams of total fat.

The salad on the menu with the second-greatest amount of sodium is likewise a bit of a sleeper. It's the Caesar salad with chicken, with 1,440 milligrams of sodium. However, you can just about halve that amount of sodium on the Caesar when you take away the chicken. The point? If you're ordering any salad at all from Panera, adding on the chicken is going to significantly increase the amount of sodium in that salad.

Sure, the balsamic greens with grains salad at Panera — with its vinaigrette-tossed greens, whole grains, fresh veg, feta, and pumpkin seeds — isn't perfect. However, it does offer a lot of benefits that help outweigh those slight imperfections. The lowest-sodium salad on the menu, it has 770 milligrams of sodium in a whole salad portion, and it comes with 8 grams of fiber, making it the salad with the second-greatest amount of fiber (following the southwest chicken ranch salad's 9 grams).

As for the imperfections, it's not the lowest-calorie salad on the menu, at 470 calories, but that's far, far from being a "high-calorie" food. (If you're wondering, the lowest-calorie salad at Panera is the Caesar salad with no chicken, but that salad has more sodium than the balsamic greens with grains salad.) There's also 11 grams of sugar, which isn't great news, but that's still half of the amount of sugar that you'll find in the Fuji apple chicken salad.

If you're thinking of ordering a sandwich at Panera, you might want to avoid the selection that's both the highest-calorie sandwich on the menu, as well as the sandwich with the greatest amount of sodium: the toasted Italiano sandwich on a baguette. It comes with 1,280 calories and 4,230 milligrams of sodium. The amount of sodium does at least make sense when you look at what all is on the sandwich — salty ingredients such as ham, soppressata, garlic aioli, and Greek dressing. However, just because it makes sense that doesn't mean it's desirable to eat nearly three days' worth of sodium in one sitting.

Additionally, as the saltiest sandwich on the menu, the toasted Italiano sandwich outranks the competition by a large margin. The second-saltiest option was the now-retired French onion ciabatta dipper, with 2,820 milligrams of sodium, which was also the second-highest in calories, at 1,130.

For a lighter, healthier sandwich, consider the cranberry walnut chicken salad on country-style rustic bread. Not only does this sandwich have about half the calories of the toasted Italiano sandwich, at 640, but it contains the least amount of sodium of all the sandwiches, at around 800 milligrams. Additionally, it's going to give you 32 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber. While that might not seem like a lot of fiber, it's still more than what you'll get from a few of your other options, like the chain's grilled cheese sandwich with its 2 grams, or the turkey and cheddar sourdough sandwich with its 3 grams.

Of course, you can get Panera's sandwiches made on whatever bread you happen to choose, so if you want to adjust a sandwich's nutritional content by making some bread swaps, that's also an option. For example, if a sandwich is served on a French baguette, like the toasted Italiano sandwich, but you want to cut down on the sodium, you could ask for a lower sodium option like the country rustic sourdough or the classic white bread. (The country rustic bread that the cranberry walnut chicken salad comes on is one of the overall lowest-calorie and lowest-sodium breads that Panera makes.)

People love Panera's macaroni and cheese. As such, the company caters to the masses by expanding and evolving its mac and cheese offerings with temporary menu items like the Panera mac and cheese grilled sandwich, and the Panera broccoli cheddar mac and cheese that was quickly beloved but then discontinued. Luckily, though, it doesn't seem like Panera is going to mess with its OG mac — even if it could use a healthy upgrade.

Panera's original macaroni and cheese, when eaten in the bowl size, comes with 960 calories; 2,300 milligrams of sodium; 15 grams of sugar; 64 grams of fat; and 2 grams of trans fat. There's no fiber to be seen anywhere, but at least there's 32 grams of protein. All around, this macaroni and cheese is not going to do your body any favors, even if it might do your soul some good (though sometimes that's all that matters!).

The Panera menu provides a plethora of soup options and picking the definitive healthiest out of the entire group is a bit difficult, as many varieties are impressive in one area, but not in another. However, the creamy tomato soup does blend enough positive features that it can be considered one of your overall healthiest options across the entire restaurant menu.

At 370 calories in a bowl-sized serving, it's definitely one of the lower-calorie soups. With 1,120 milligrams of sodium, it's not really what you'd call a low-sodium food, but that number still puts it among the soups with the least amount of sodium. It also has one of the least amounts of carbohydrates out of the soup selection. There is an unfortunate 17 grams of sugar, but you'll find comparable amounts of sugar in the seasonal autumn squash soup as well. In fact, if you want a soup with a very small amount of sugar, your only option is going to be the rustic baked potato soup.

Sad news: Panera's bread bowls are decidedly unhealthy. No matter the food of your choosing, if you put it in a bread bowl at Panera, it's going to be significantly less healthy. For example, say you want to order the bistro French onion soup. By itself, in a bowl, it's 290 calories. Put it in a bread bowl, though, and that number jumps to 860 calories. The sodium, meanwhile, goes from 1,990 milligrams to 2,490 milligrams, and the carbs go from 33 to 153 grams. On its own, the bread bowl is 670 calories, with 1,160 milligrams of sodium.

Still, these facts do not keep the public from loving those bread bowls. In fact, people love them so much that, at one point, Panera sold a double bread bowl for double the bread, double the soup, and double the love. However, if you do ever find that you're just not feeling the heaviness of a bread bowl anymore, you do have other options, if you're willing to get into the kitchen. Onion bowls are a lighter, more flavorful alternative to the traditional bread bowl.