50 Fast Food Items You Need To Eat Before You Die

The average American spends $1,200 per year on fast food. For some Americans, if they're being honest, they spend that in a month. While there is a lot of junk on fast food menus across the United States, there are also items that you owe it to yourself to eat. Maybe you won't like it, maybe you will never eat it again — but it'd be a shame for you to enter your grave before at least giving your taste buds a chance to fall in love with these fast food items.

It'd be an impossible task to go to every fast food restaurant from sea to shining sea and sample each item available. Not only would you run out of time, all those calories would take a toll on your health. Instead of eating yourself to an early death, scroll down and review this complete list of fast food items you need to eat at least once before your final breath.

While Sonic Drive-In definitely has some quality food options, it's their drinks that set this place apart from the competition. Their most iconic drink and the drink they've mastered the most has to be the Cherry Limeade. Both the cherry and lime flavors are strong, but not overbearing or unpleasant. 

First you'll taste the cherry and it'll soon be followed by a lime-flavored aftertaste, and the two flavors together are simply amazing. To top it off, your drink will be filled with ice from Sonic Drive-In, which is without a doubt the best tasting ice of any fast food restaurant.

The classic chocolate Frosty from Wendy's doesn't look too special or too unique, but there's just nothing else quite like it. While it appears to be chocolate ice cream, it's actually a dessert that resides somewhere between soft serve ice cream and an old fashioned milkshake. Furthermore, a classic chocolate Frosty is actually made with both chocolate and vanilla, making it the perfect flavor balance. 

These days, you can also order a vanilla Frosty, but it's just not the same. Go with the classic version and then, if you really want the ultimate experience, dip your Wendy's fries in the Frosty while you're at it.

Even if you're on a diet, it's worthwhile to make an exception and head to Krispy Kreme for an Original Glazed Doughnut. But this endeavor is not quite as simple as it sounds. What you need to do is scout out a Krispy Kreme location and keep an eye out for the Hot Light. Once you see it light up, that's a sign from the doughnut gods (or maybe just the Krispy Kreme employees) that there are fresh doughnuts available. That's the moment you storm Krispy Kreme to pick up an Original Glazed Doughnut. With it being hot and fresh, it will practically melt in your mouth and overwhelm your senses with yumminess and happiness.

If you've never had an Animal Style Burger from In-N-Out Burger, hop in your car now and go get yourself one. Don't worry, no one will look at you funny when you order it. 

What saying Animal Style at In-N-Out Burger will get you is a burger that's beef patty was grilled with the help of mustard, and it's amazing. To add to the fun, you'll get grilled onions, pickles, and an extra layer of their special spread. Plus, you still receive the same tomato and lettuce you get when you order one of their other burgers. 

But be warned, once you go Animal Style, you never go back.

Panda Express calls their Original Orange Chicken their "signature dish" — and for very good reason. Panda Express' Orange Chicken is the best dish you will find at any fast food Chinese restaurant. 

The first thing you'll notice when you chow down is that each piece has a sufficient and juicy amount of meat. Then the flavors hit you. You'll taste the sweetness first, which is entirely pleasant. Then the spicy, orangey flavor catches your attention and the whole experience is taken to the next level. From the texture to the taste, you can't ask for much better bang for your fast food buck.

Is it even officially fall if you don't drink a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks? This coffee drink is the result of what would happen if all the best parts of autumn were melted down into a drinkable liquid. One sip and you'll be ready for falling leaves, Halloween, autumn colors, Thanksgiving, and everything else the season has to offer. 

It's not a complicated flavor profile, but Starbucks does pumpkin spice better than anyone else. If you end up drinking one of these lattes each morning during fall, no one will blame you.

Dairy Queen seemingly has a never ending list of dessert options. Even when you decide you want a Blizzard, you are still left with an overwhelming number of choices. However, if you want to locate the cream of the crop, order a Butterfinger Blizzard. Even if you don't love the candy bar, you'll love this soft serve treat. 

The Butterfinger is such a winner because it meshes perfectly with vanilla soft serve. You get a mixture of chocolate, sweetness, and saltiness that will have your taste buds doing somersaults.

Eat it forward or backward, it doesn't matter. The most important thing is that you try Mozzarella Stuffed Crust Pizza from Pizza Hut before you die. 

While it costs a little bit extra compared to the other crust options at Pizza Hut, it's worth the added money. Crust that is stuffed with mozzarella suddenly makes the crust the star of the show, no matter what toppings you put on the rest of the pie. Pizza Hut also lets you specify the flavor of the crust itself, so give Buttery Garlic or Toasted Parmesan a try.

The Whopper from Burger King is one of the most popular burgers in America, and you deserve to find out why. It has a quarter pound of beef, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, ketchup, and mayo within a bun topped with sesame seeds. What makes the Whopper so special, though, is the flame-grilled taste of the beef. It's a flavor that you can't find anywhere else. 

The Whopper is like you had a barbecue in your backyard and finally made that elusive perfect burger — but without all the hassle. Buy a Whopper, eat it hot, and you may have a new favorite burger.

These days, White Castle has over a dozen different types of sliders. While some of them are worth trying, you must try the Original Slider, because it's the best of the bunch. This is where it all started, and where the "Cravers" craze began.

 Many have tried to duplicate White Castle's slider success but it's never been truly copied. The Original Slider has a beef patty that is steam grilled on top of onions. Before the bun goes on top, a pickle slice is added to heighten the overall flavor of the slider. While the slider is small in stature, it's rather large in taste — and something everyone should experience at least one time.

When it comes to Arby's, their Classic Beef 'n Cheddar stands front and center. It's everything that is good about Arby's, distilled into one sandwich. 

Start with the onion roll, which is toasted to help release all the aroma and flavor. Next, the roast beef — the meat that makes Arby's Arby's — is covered with a cheesy sauce made out of cheddar. Finally, Arby's Red Ranch sauce is added to provide the right about of zest to the equation. 

When you order it for the first time, be sure to order two of these bad boys because you'll want an encore once you're finished with the first one.

For a root beer float done right that you wouldn't want to miss out on, head to A&W. 

A&W is known for their root beer, and if you live near an A&W restaurant, that's the mecca when it comes root beer floats. They've become world-renowned experts in this field, and their floats definitely live up to the hype.

 It's difficult to say for sure whether it's the frosty mug, soft serve vanilla ice cream, or the A&W Root Beer itself that makes this so good, but it will bring your life pleasure, guaranteed.

You can find good pizza at Domino's, but the thing that you need to eat at least once is their Parmesan Bread Bites. 

These oven-baked goodies are made by hand using dough infused with butter. After they are baked to a golden brown, the bread bites are seasoned with Parmesan cheese and garlic. Eat them while they're hot to taste them at their best. In fact, you can order marinara dipping sauce and skip the pizza all together. 

Get 16 or 32 of these bites and a few sauces, and you'll be praising your decision.

Long John Silver's is primarily known for their seafood. That said, their hush puppies are what will confuse you. Why the confusion? You won't be able to figure out why something so simple, so small, and so unassuming will be able to be so good. 

Go ahead and order some fish while you're at Long John Silver's, but double-check to make sure you get hush puppies with your meal. By the time you finish eating, the hush puppies will be what you treasure.

For those who love barbecue sauce on their cheeseburgers, the Western Bacon Cheeseburger from Carl's Jr. is the answer to your prayers. 

The barbecue sauce is more tangy than sweet, which makes it perfect for burger purposes. You won't be surprised to find the beef patty, the two strips of bacon, or the American cheese. What will surprise you are the two onion rings that have hitched a ride on this cheeseburger. Don't worry, the onion rings may look out of place but they are exactly where they need to be.

Wingstop is unquestionably the place to go for chicken wings. Before it's your time to leave the land of the living, it's a priority to not only try Wingstop wings, but to try their lemon pepper wings. 

Almost all of their flavors are worth your hard-earned money, but their lemon pepper wings are truly the top of the mountain. And while you can order the wings boneless, just don't. For the full flavor, go with the original, bone-in wings. If you want a dipping sauce, bleu cheese goes perfectly with their lemon pepper wings.

You might consider Little Caesars to be the destination of broke college students. While that may be true to an extent, don't let their reputation fool you, as their Italian Cheese Bread is a fast food item you really need to eat. While a lot of cheese bread from pizza places is stiff and short on cheese, that's not the case at Little Caesars. This Italian Cheese Bread is crispy on the edges but soft in the middle, topped with a generous amount of cheese, and blessed with authentic Italian spices.

Though you may think that you have a favorite ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, your opinion doesn't count unless you've tried their Pralines 'N Cream ice cream. It's not only the best ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, it very well could be the best ice cream on the planet. 

Within the vanilla ice cream foundation you'll find veins of caramel. But what will grab your undivided attention on your first lick are the pieces of pecans that have each been loved by a coating of praline. You'll never look at ice cream in the same way again.

While KFC is known for their delicious fried chicken, you don't want to croak before you taste their mashed potatoes and gravy. 

Visually, it looks like a run of the mill offering you can find at other fast food restaurants. Give it a taste, though, and you'll understand the magic. The mashed potatoes are perfectly creamy and tasty on their own. But that's not even the best part — the gravy is what you'll remember. KFC's gravy is savory, brown, and will make you cherish every last spoonful of the mashed potatoes.

Cheese curds from a fast food eatery can be risky. But at Culver's, it's exactly what you want to order. 

Their Wisconsin Cheese Curds take yellow and white cheddar cheese exclusively from Wisconsin and then deep fry it. Get your mitts on a large order of these fried cheese curds and you'll be set. Each bite of cheese will be better than the last. By the time you're done, you'll be wondering why you've ever eaten anything else, and you'll be thankful you ate it before you entered your casket.

In a world of stringy and soggy shoestring fries, Chick-fil-A's waffle fries come with endless dipping options and a boost of serotonin. Its unique shape and wide surface area allows for optimal dip-ability in your favorite sauce, and fits perfectly on a chicken sandwich for a chips-on-a-deli-sandwich vibe.

Chick-fil-A has been rolling out bags on bags of fried potato goodness since 1985, and haven't changed their super secret recipe in over 30 years. Now, it continues to be the most popular item on Chick-fil-A's menu with one store going through 240 bags a day, beating out the heavy-hitters like their Original Chicken Sandwich, and the classic nuggets. Their simple ingredients add to the deliciousness –– potatoes grown on a family-owned farm in Washington State, salt, and canola oil.

Whether you are on team potato skin, soft and squishy, or a crunchy bottom-of-the-box kinda fry person, it's hard to say no to just a couple of fries.

Once a hot dog stand in Madison Square Park, Shake Shack started on the basis of simple values like community, accountability, and a people-first mentality. The restaurant didn't have a fairytale beginning, with Shake Shack starting its inception with low profits and a not-so-positive review in the New York Times in 2012.

However, this trendy burger chain rose to popularity, and became one of the most popular burger joints in America valued at over $3 billion with over 377 locations worldwide. The Shack Stack burger is not only a major tongue-twister, but also a journey for your tastebuds. It's the mashup of Shake Shack's classic cheeseburger, and its vegetarian 'shroom burger –– a cheeseburger topped with fried mushroom filled with cheese, lettuce, tomato, and ShackSauce, a mixture of mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, pickle brine, and cayenne pepper. It's the perfect mashup of vegetarian and carnivorous delight –– just come hungry and bring a lot of napkins.

The Bo-Berry biscuit lives in a perpetual identity crisis –– is it a dessert, or a side? Is it savory or sweet, or both? Where does a Bo-Berry come from? These are all things that people choose to put aside for the sake of deliciousness.

Since 1977, Bojangles' has been serving quick, made-from-scratch comfort food such as its classic fried chicken and even more notable biscuits. In a Garden & Gun piece, writer, Jed Portman, decided to try his hand at biscuit-making to see how Bojangles' biscuits were made. Portman found that Bojangles' makes over 1,000 biscuits in an eight-hour shift. The process has 48 steps from sifting the flour, to mixing and folding everything by hand. With around 75% of the menu featuring a biscuit, it's understandable how much time they put into these biscuits –– especially the Bo-Berry biscuits. Made with Bo-Berries (which taste strangely like blueberries) and topped with cinnamon roll-like icing, this unique dessert is the perfect marriage of sweet and savory, and even features fun, marketable heart-shaped biscuits for Valentine's Day.

Whenever you walk into a mall, you know the smell, and no –– it's not coming from Abercrombie & Fitch. It smells like fresh bread, and melted butter, and it is one of the reasons most people still go to the mall in these modern times. What started as a farmer's market stand in 1988, Auntie Anne's has morphed into a mall staple that is both nostalgic and slightly unobtainable, since you can't find them at just any mall.

Auntie Anne's classic pretzels are made from scratch right in front of your hungry eyes, with a special mix of flour, sugar, and baking soda, and topped with melted butter –– there's a reason why scent marketing is a thing. However, the only thing better is the bite-sized pretzel nuggets that have surpassed traditional pretzels in sales, and are perfect to eat while window shopping. Auntie Anne's offers its original butter and salt-flavored pretzels in nugget form, and other twists on the classic like cinnamon sugar, pepperoni pretzel, and mini pretzel dogs. You don't have to trudge through a mall for your pretzel fix –– buy the frozen Auntie Anne's pretzels online and enjoy them at home or on the go.

Cookout is a fast food right-of-passage through any Southern town, and undeniably, one of the most underrated fast food chains you probably have never seen. Since 1989, Cookout has been a nostalgic hangout illuminated by a bright neon sign that guarantees you'll with a full stomach for under 10 dollars. For millenials and drunk college students, it is a 4 a.m. solace for the drunchies and munchies with a drive-thru almost as long as its menu. Its menu is overwhelming and abundant with its classic tray combos and over 40 flavors of milkshakes so thick, that you'll get lock-jaw trying to drink it through a straw.

The Cheerwine float –– a cherry-flavored soda blended with vanilla soft serve –– is equally as niche, and yet incredible. Cheerwine was created in North Carolina, the home of the first Cookout, and is as "uniquely Southern" as the fast-food joint without selling actual Southern food.