Eat McDonald's New Salt Bomb Burger Today, Hibernate Tomorrow

It's just about time for winter hibernation, and McDonald's is, as always, happy to help you store up enough fat and calories to sleep until spring. Today it's introducing its new Bacon BBQ Burger, which, the advertising campaign suggests, makes a fabulous holiday meal when paired with the Snickerdoodle McFlurry: "easy, delicious dinner to keep savoring the season."

The Bacon BBQ Burger is a lot like the Signature Bacon Smokehouse Burger (a victim of last spring's attempt to pare down the menu) except less high-toned: It substitutes bourbon barbecue sauce for sweet and smoky bacon-onion, and American cheese for white cheddar. In its single version, it contains 710 calories, 330 of which are from fat, and 1530 milligrams of sodium. (The double is 920 calories.) This is more than the Quarter Pounder With Cheese Bacon (640 calories, 1480 milligrams of sodium, and no onion rings) but less than the Hardee's Six Dollar Western X-Tra Bacon Thickburger (1020 calories and a whopping 1930 milligrams of sodium).

But maybe McDonald's is onto something, some sort of ancient biological imperative: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Or, at the very least, next month go back to soup, bone broth, and the gym.