A basic rule throughout nature is that larger animals tend to live longer than smaller ones. Elephants saunter into their sixties and whales can cruise the ocean for centuries, whereas mice live about a year or two and the common house fly won’t make it past a month.
The major reasons for the discrepancy are slower metabolisms and reduced risks from predators. However, there is a disconnect when it comes to man’s best friend. On average, smaller dogs tend to outlive larger ones.
For instance, petite Chihuahuas can live up to 15 years, outliving their significantly larger counterparts, Great Danes, by a solid 8 years. What’s to account for the huge difference in lifespan?
Dogs diverge from the rest of the animal kingdom regarding longevity primarily because of how they mature as puppies.
According to Discover Magazine, larger breeds suffer from more physical ailments when they age because they expend more of their early resources for growth instead of maintaining their bodies. This can lead to more damage on the cellular level that doesn’t manifest until the dog has reached adulthood. This lowers a larger dog’s defenses against cancer while also raising the possibility of DNA replication damage that can lead to cancer at a later age.
To put it simply: Larger dogs grow up fast, which leads to a faster decline.
“There’s a body of robust theory in evolutionary biology—what we call ‘life history theory’ – about the way animals allocate their resources to different functions,” evolutionary biologist Professor Mark Elgar of the University of Melbourne’s School of Biosciences told Phys.org. “The bottom line is, there is no free lunch.”
“We conclude that large dogs die young mainly because they age quickly,” Elgar says.
It appears that all that wear and tear on a large breed dog’s body as they rapidly grow can harm its health in the long run. A group of undergraduate students from Colgate University in New York found that as puppies, large breed dogs have significantly more free radicals in their cells, which can lead to damage that has long-lasting effects.
Free radicals steal parts from other molecules, which causes damage and can lead to aging and disease.
Being a dog lover is bittersweet because you know that you and your furry friend will have to say goodbye one day. I guess that’s what makes the time together so special. Your time together is finite, so it’s best to enjoy it together while you can.
The good news is that, as pet owners, if we take good care of our dogs, they can have the best chance of living a long and happy life. The American Kennel Club offers this list of tips to promote your dog’s longevity and quality of life:
Feeding a healthy diet
Helping maintain a healthy weight
Encouraging breed- and age-appropriate physical and mental exercise
Taking our dogs for annual veterinary checkups and vaccinations
Providing preventive dental care
Administering heartworm, flea and tick preventatives
For years, Inside the NBA has been the gold standard of sports studio shows. It is the show that every network aspires to create, but few (if any) have come close to replicating for a variety of reasons.
The biggest one is on-air talent, as Ernie Johnson is irreplaceable as host, Charles Barkley is truly one of a kind, and Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal round out the desk as perfect complements and foils. However, the advantages the show has go beyond the chemistry and talent of the on-air crew, largely due to the folks behind the scenes who create the space needed to make great television.
That space is, as Jeremy Levin (VP, coordinating producer) explains, something they’ve worked hard to create and is the product of endless behind the scenes work with various partners, departments, and higher-ups. It is most notable with Inside the NBA, as TNT’s postgame show has as much freedom as any studio show on television. On a big night with plenty to talk about and a conversation that’s flowing, there’s not a lot of stress if they run over their time allotment and bump into whatever movie is scheduled for the early hours of the morning.
It’s why the crew can steer into the tangents, rants, and back-and-forth arguments in a way few other shows can, knowing there’s a cushion there to go long. If it’s a light night and they end a little early, it’s just as easy to bump something up. It is a luxury most networks don’t have and is part of the magic of being the only live programming that TNT needs to worry about, something Ernie Johnson doesn’t take for granted.
“If the show runs an hour, or if it runs 50 minutes or if it runs an hour and 10, I think our producers are aware that — man, if we’ve got a good thing going, we’re not going to cut it off,” Johnson says. “If we’re really diving into something or if guys are breaking down plays of a game that has come down to two or three crucial plays, and then we get reaction from a coach or a player and we want to talk about that, we don’t feel like ‘Hey, hurry up, we gotta get this done.’ So having that latitude is huge. And it does allow you to just, you know, to not rush through thoughts or feel like you have to beat the clock.”
While postgame freedom is a product of their environment, they’ve worked hardest to carve out the necessary space to create similar flowing conversations at halftime. Given there’s a hard in and hard out from when the second quarter ends and the third quarter begins, it requires some creativity to foster the same kind of vibe with a clock actually ticking. What they realized was, in order to make the halftime show worthwhile, they needed to focus on one longer segment where they have the freedom to go long and actually get a chance to talk about the game, rather than trying to hit their marks on a number of shorter segments.
“We recognize here, it’s important to have that space to be able to talk. If you’re gonna have four people on the desk, there’s no sense in doing a halftime show where each guy has 15 seconds,” Levin says. “So, what we’ve done is it used to be like three segments, so we shaved it down to two segments and we combined some commercials together so that gives you, instead of trying to fill three blocks of time, you’re only trying to fill two, so you can lengthen the two a little bit.”
That required working with sales to make the commercial breaks before and after the segment a bit longer and shift commercial inventory around to other areas of the night. This allowed them to get through their standard script — Shaq’s pictures, Kenny’s big board segment, and Chuck’s first half thoughts — while also allowing for the banter and conversation that makes the show beloved, and keeps things fresh by going in different orders and, depending on who has the most to say, gives different people more time on any given night.
As Levin explains, the second segment of halftime is the “accordion” segment, which can be trimmed to as short as 15 seconds or lengthened to 90 seconds, depending on whether Chuck and the guys blow through the initial timetable with a conversation that goes long.
“Shaq or Kenny might say something in one of their videos, and Chuck might have already said his point, but it’ll never be like, ‘Hey, Chuck, you can’t say anything,’” Levin says. “Like, if Chuck’s got a point he wants to make behind that coming off their video, we tried to allow that space for that to occur. And sometimes, that’ll lead to a discussion back and forth. … We’ll leave space for that and then we’ll just shorten the second segment.”
Everything is done with the end goal of allowing the guys to be authentic, which is made easier by having Barkley as the face of the show. As Johnson notes, they never have to say, “‘Hey Chuck, make sure you’re authentic tonight,’ that’s just in his DNA.” That sometimes means he drags the show out into deep waters, as Chuck might make a Clarence Thomas joke or wish he was watching something else during a boring game, but it’s what makes him the show’s north star when it comes to maintaining a natural feel.
“A lot of that comes from from Charles. Another kind of key word or mantra we have around here’s ‘authentic.’ You know, keeping your authentic voice and staying true to yourself, and Charles resonates that more than anybody,” Levin says. “If the game is boring or sh*tty, he’ll be the first one to say it. I think it was the other night he was like, ‘Hey, I’m watching the two hockey games.’ So you know, he’s the shining light of that. And that allows us all to kind of remain a little truer, a little more authentic to ourselves and what we actually feel.”
For a show that has found its success by allowing everyone to be themselves, the only way to have that happen is to carve out enough time for them to be comfortable and not be focused on spitting out their takes or analysis in a regimented time-frame. They have, previously, had timed sponsored segments that didn’t always work as intended, yielding Shaq’s all-time “one, two, back to one” rant.
A moment like that is part of what separates Inside, but it also shows how they’ve seamlessly integrated so many different facets of production to augment what the guys on the set are doing. Alex Houvouras (Art Director, Associate Producer) has been in charge of graphics and art for the show for years, creating memes before memes were a thing. He’s the one doodling on the Alex Len photo in the clip above, giving the show some of its unique color that affords the guys on set something else to react to. For Houvouras, his job is all about active listening, and then trying to turn ideas into reality as quickly as he can so it’s still fresh.
“I’m just listening to the mics,” Houvouras says. “Really, all of us behind the scenes are kind of in service to the guys, and we’re all just trying to keep that conversation flowing and keep the jokes running as they’re talking. So we’re all trying to service the conversation that they’re having. So, if I hear something that I think is funny, or I think is good visual, I’m just hopping on and trying to get it out there in the next couple of minutes so it’s timely.”
Working in tandem with Houvouras is Andrew Prezioso (Production Assistant), aka Prez, who does the digging to find the tweets that make it to air. Part of why Inside resonates the way it does is the feeling of involvement fans have, because if they tweet something in reaction to the show, Prez might just go find it and throw it up on the screen — whether their account is tagged or not — for the guys to see. For Levin, the social element has become incredibly important to what they do, which is why Prezioso and the social team are part of every production meeting to make sure the TV and social sides are in lock step.
Adding social elements to a TV show can be tricky, but what makes it work for Inside is how natural it is, sticking with their mantra of being authentic. It’s why Prezioso seeks out those tweets rather than asking for engagement with polls or questions.
“It’s not something that people have to go and tag us, or we have to go and ask for,” Prezioso says. “It’s just kind of giving the voice of the fans and putting that into the show and allowing them to interact with guys like Chuck and Shaq and Kenny and EJ. Just seeing the fans reactions to all that, I think it’s something that’s really unique to what we do.”
As everyone I talked to notes, the reason it all works is that the guys on set are willing to respond and have fun with it, particularly at their own expense. A tweet that prods Chuck or Shaq is going to get laughs from the rest of the crew, while they’re likely to return fire. If it’s Kenny, he might stew over it, which only makes it funnier and ensures they go back to the well over and over.
“If the guys up on set had bigger egos, softer personalities, whatever and they weren’t willing to take the jokes, this wouldn’t work,” Prezioso says. “But we’re allowed to continue to make those jokes. Like, I know Kenny keeps on saying he doesn’t like being a dog, but then it keeps on helping us replenish dog GIFs, and it just kind of makes everything more fun.”
Houvouras and Prezioso know they’ve done their job when they throw up an image or a tweet and get the guys rolling on set, with breaking Johnson as the ultimate goal. For Johnson and the guys on the set, adding all of those different elements has only served to keep the show fresh after all these years, as they’ve managed to adapt and stay relevant while also still just being themselves. Johnson can remember when the social stuff was thought of as a gimmick, working a PGA Championship broadcast that didn’t want to put up tweets from golfers, but now is integral to how Inside operates and allows them to interact with fans.
Having a crew that’s been together for so long — in front of and behind the camera — is another benefit they have that isn’t always afforded to shows. They’ve had the same group on air for more than a decade, with Shaq as the most “recent” addition in 2011. Levin and Johnson have worked together for more than 10 years, dating back to Fan Night on NBA TV, where they got to learn each other’s rhythms before Levin took over on Inside. The continuity allows for an open flow of ideas behind the camera and non-verbal communication on it, as Ernie can see a little twinkle in Shaq or Chuck’s eyes and know exactly how to set them up for a great moment.
“I’m the rogue traffic cop, the guy who does want some collisions at his intersection,” Johnson says with a laugh. “I think after working with these guys for so long, I know that in my prep if I bring up this point, Charles is going to jump on it. And I also know that Shaq is probably going to broadside Charles when he says something. It’s that familiarity with each other and knowing how we all think, that’s what makes it work. And that’s what makes it possible to do that show without rehearsing at all. We never do that. We never sit down and run through a segment. It’s just whatever you see right there is genuine gut level reaction. And I think that’s been the key to the show for years.”
Every show wants a feel of authenticity and to make viewers believe everyone on set is having as much fun as they would getting paid to talk about basketball. Inside is one of the very few sports shows that achieves that, and does so by going against the natural instincts of making a TV show.
“When you’re producing a show, you want to hold on and you want to have control and know ,like, this is how it’s gonna go and this is how it’s gonna time out,” Levin says. “That makes it a lot more comfortable for you as a producer, but being able to take your hands off the wheel and just going like, hey, we’re gonna ride this thing out and see which way it goes. If the car veers left, we’ll go left, and right, we’re gonna go right. It’s a really hard thing to do as a producer and it takes some time and reps to get comfortable with that. And being willing to take the risk that, when you let your hands off the wheel, sometimes you’re gonna go into the ditch. That does happen from time to time, but we have the creative freedom from everybody above me to be able to make mistakes and to be able to kind of let it go off the rails from time to time.”
It’s not something many networks are willing to do, but TNT has and the Inside guys have rewarded them for it by consistently producing the most entertaining sports studio show out there. They’ve continued to adopt new ways to keep the show fresh — even when they’re on six nights a week in the playoffs — while still leaning on the formula that works.
The results speak for themselves. It might not always go according to plan, but it’s rarely not enjoyable to watch.
“I mean,” Johnson says with a laugh, “Every one of our shows is somewhere between a walk on the beach and a train wreck.”
To some, it appears that Taylor Swift has a new book on the horizon. There’s a mystery book that some believe to be an unannounced Swift memoir, but Variety says they “can report for certain” that Swift is not behind the book.
Based just on speculation, the book became a best-seller via some retailers. Perhaps understandably, Swifties whipped themselves into a franzy analyzing supposed “clues” and concluding (incorrectly) that Swift does indeed have a book out soon. As Variety notes, a document supposed from publisher Flatiron says the book is set for release on June 13, with 13 of course being a number long associated with Swift. Furthermore, the book has 544 pages; Add 5, 4, and 4 together and you get 13.
What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve done because of Taylor Swift?
I pre-ordered a book I know nothing about on the SLIGHT chance it’s her memoir. pic.twitter.com/hrddfJKu9h
Currently, the book is known as just 4C Untitled Flatiron Nonfiction Summer 2023 and is credited to “Flatiron Author to Be Revealed July 2023.” It also bears the classification “Bios & Memoirs.”
Of the book, an unconfirmed pitch says a million copies will be printed, and it notes, “This is not a political book, it is a fun, celebratory title and will skew slightly younger, but is for people of all ages. This has global appeal and will have massive publicity. I would comp this to Flatiron’s Matthew Perry memoir… and a little bit to ‘Spare’ by Prince Harry.”
So, while it remains unclear who wrote this book, it seems very much like it’s not Swift.
It seems that Americans are finally joining the rest of the world in their obsession with Formula 1. You’ve got Netflix releasing the iconic series Drive to Survive, will.i.am and Lil Wayne dropping a single literally title “The Formula,” and a pretty wild collection of parties in Miami last weekend to celebrate the high-tech supercars of Europe getting exported across the Atlantic for an adrenaline-packed race dubbed The Miami Grand Prix.
As with all things F1 and Miami, the electrifying race set the stage for even more excitement — including will.i.am’s new FYI app launch and “Miami Race Nights” at Fontainebleau Miami Beach. On Saturday, May 6, DJ Vice and hitmaker Martin Garrix took the stage, igniting the crowd with an explosive medley of high-energy electronic dance jams that reverberated through the air, matching the adrenaline-fueled decibel levels of an F1 pit lane (with a lot more intoxicants).
Fontainebleau Miami Beach and BleauLive didn’t stop the party after the first evening of Miami Race Nights. On Sunday, May 7, the excitement continued with unforgettable post-F1 performances. Alec Monopoly and Kaskade rocked the stage, delivering a performance that shook the ground beneath the cheering crowd. Finally, three-time GRAMMY winner Ludacris brought down the house with a surprise set. With a resume of chart-topping hits like “Stand Up,” “Area Codes,” and his GOLD-certified anthem from 2 Fast 2 Furious, “Act a Fool,” Ludacris proved once again why he is a force to be reckoned with.
Tory Lanez’s request for a new trial in the Megan Thee Stallion shooting case was denied by a judge, according to freelance reporter Meghann Cuniff. Judge David Herriford ruled from the bench that Tory’s argument that the original case was full of errors was specious at best, saying that even if such errors existed, they’d have “no material effect on the outcome of the trial.”
Tory Lanez WILL NOT get a new trial for the 2020 shooting of Megan Thee Stallion. This is according to Judge David Herriford, who ruled from the bench a few minutes ago.
Herriford went through the seven main arguments from Lanez’s lawyers and dismantled each one. He concluded there were no errors. But he also said even if he concluded each error existed, the errors didn’t have a material affect on the outcome of the trial to warrant a new trial.
Of course, Tory’s lawyers refused to accept that decision, and in what Cuniff calls an unusual (“jaw-dropping”) move, filed a motion to have Herriford disqualified from the case. The purpose of the bid was to forestall his ruling that no new trial was warranted, with Tory’s lawyers arguing that the decision couldn’t be issued until the motion was resolved. Talk about your sour grapes.
In truth, the biggest mistakes made during the trial appeared to be on the part of Tory’s defense. A star witness for the defense apparently confirmed that Tory not only held the gun that shot Megan Thee Stallion in the feet but that he fired it in what looked like a fit of pique — exactly as Megan herself recounted the incident in her own testimony. Tory’s lawyers even pushed back his hearing for a new trial last month so they’d have more time to argue their motion for a new trial and yet… here we are.
Tory was found guilty of all three of the original charges of assault with a firearm, concealing a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle, and discharging a firearm with gross negligence, although he did avoid a witness tampering charge altogether for allegedly offering Megan and her friend $1 million to change their respective stories. Tory will be sentenced at a future date.
Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
The NBA announced the 10 players who were named to the 2022-23 All-Defensive Teams on Tuesday, which sparked plenty of discussion about snubs and who got more votes than they should have. While the 10 names that made the teams weren’t a huge surprise — which didn’t stop there from being some fan bases mad their guy didn’t make it — there were some particularly curious one-off votes that raised eyebrows.
Among them was Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton receiving a first-team vote, which was the only ballot that had him on All-Defense at all. That was a rather shocking selection from someone, and even the All-Star himself was confused to find that he’d received a vote, posting a rather incredible response on Twitter to the news.
We love when a player can find the humor in something like this, as Haliburton knows he’s not exactly known for being a lockdown defender. He did finish tied for 20th in the league in steals (91) on the season and isn’t a bad defender, but you’d be hard-pressed to find too many that would have him near the top of their list of guard defenders in the league. Apparently one person has him top-two, though, and Haliburton was able to have a little fun with his placement on the “others receiving votes” tab.
In April 2022, Mississippi Today reporter Anna Wolfe rocked the worlds of sports and politics when she published a groundbreaking report about how Brett Favre and his pal, former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant, were seemingly up to no good. According to Wolfe’s report, Favre seemed to have leveraged his in with one of the state’s top politicos to receive funding for such non-essential things as a new volleyball stadium at the college his daughter attends — and that the money had come from the state’s struggling welfare fund.
On Monday, Wolfe — who is 28 years old — won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for her reporting of political corruption within the state. According to Poynter, she celebrated the accolade with her parents. Favre, meanwhile, may have been too busy to notice that the reporter who uncovered his private text messages and blew the lid off this scandal was being feted with her industry’s top honor. Because he was over on Twitter calling on his less-than-350,000 followers to boycott Fox News for doing his boy Tucker Carlson dirty.
I’m with Tucker. Time to boycott Fox until they come to their senses and let the man speak. pic.twitter.com/dvrNlLdvgW
Former NFL QB Brett Favre — who allegedly participated in a scheme to misappropriate nearly $77 million in a Mississippi welfare scandal — calls for a boycott of Fox News for firing Tucker Carlson, who he calls a “genuine, good guy.” pic.twitter.com/3Nm7H749Kl
Though, from Favre’s retelling, it sounds like he has maybe spent a whole of just a couple of hours in Carlson’s presence. But apparently that was enough for Favre to put aside any of the revelations that have come out about Tucker’s off-air personality and choose to believe that he’s a great guy who was just completely dicked over by the company he worked for.
Favre explained to he “got to spend some time with Tucker” about a year ago, when he was a guest on his then-still-existent Fox News program. Favre and his wife had dinner with Carlson and his crew the night before their interview, and Favre just really liked the guy, ok?!?
“I got the impression that what you see is what you get,” Favre said of Carlson, which feels like a bad read since recent revelations via the Dominion Lawsuit have shown that Carlson’s on-air personality and his behavior in private were actually quite contradictory.
Perhaps it’s also worth mentioning that Favre estimates he suffered “thousands” of concussions throughout his career.
Vanna White has been turning and tapping letters on Wheel of Fortune for over 40 years. This week, she’ll get her chance behind the wheel.
White will compete against Jeopardy!‘s Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik on a special “Ultimate Host Night” episode of Celebrity Wheel of Fortune on Wednesday. Her replacement: co-host Pat Sajak’s daughter, Maggie.
“I’ve never seen your left side, it’s very nice. It’s as nice as your right side,” Sajak joked to White in a clip from the episode. When asked if it’s strange to see someone else at the puzzle board, White replied, “It does, but Maggie, thank you so much for filling in for me. I know you’re going to do a great job.”
Maggie Sajak took to her Instagram with the news she will be helping out on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, while White competes on the show. “Warming up for Wednesday,” she captioned it. “I hope to make Vanna proud.” Her dad commented on the post, writing, “I think I’m gonna cry.”
Sajak has experience. Maggie Sajak, not Pat, although him, too. She’s been a social media correspondent for Wheel of Fortune since 2021, including behind-the-scenes content and interviews with contestants (not the comically unlucky ones, however). Also, her dad hosts the show, which helps.
Good luck to Maggie. But mostly good luck to Vanna. I hope she trounces those smug Jeopardy! bastards. They think they’re so smart…
But how does the OG version really taste? Should it only be relegated to the iconic Jack and Coke? Or does that legendary sugar maple charcoal filtration (the famed Lincoln County Process) really make it a viable sipper?
Jack Daniel’s is made in Tullahoma, Tennessee, in a small holler about an hour-and-half from Nashville. The cool forested valleys provide shade for the distillery while the hills offer perches for rickhouses to hold barrels. The kicker is that the Tullahoma has a 2-mile-long cave system that provides unique spring water for the whiskey-making process at Jack Daniel’s — and keeps things extra cool in the area.
Jack Daniel’s also propagates their own yeast and lactobacillus for fermenting their mash bill of 80% corn, 8% rye, and 12% malted barley. That mashed juice is then sent through massive column stills before it’s slowly dripped through 10 feet of pebbly sugar maple charcoal, which is also made on-site at Tullahoma, from local lumber.
Very long story short, that filtering process strips the hot distillate of the harsher grain oils and flavor notes, leaving the brighter and fruitier yeast notes as the star of the whiskey and more readily available to bond with the wood sugars from the barrel. There is of course far more to it than that but that’s the biggest bullet point to take away.
After the filtering process, the whiskey is barreled in new oak with a deep #4 char. After about four years and up to seven years, barrels are selected for a batch of Old No. 7 and dumped into a vatting tank to rest. Finally, the whiskey is proofed with some of that iconic water and bottled.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Buttery banana bread with walnuts and raisins (with a hint of the cardboard box they came in) dominate the nose with a light hint of old cinnamon powder (kind of like an empty spice jar) next to the faintest hint of chewing tobacco just kissed with cherry and apple.
Palate: The palate is thin, there’s no getting around that thanks to the proofing water. But it also presents as lush banana milkshake cut with fresh vanilla and dusted with nutmeg and maybe a faint hint of old milk chocolate over some very mild oakiness.
Finish: The proofing water really amps up on the finish as the flavor washes out, leaving you with a sense of an empty apple pin tin, hints of banana bread, and an echo of cherry pipe tobacco.
Bottom Line:
This is pretty simple and fruity overall but does have a well-rounded flavor profile. The issue — and why it’s most often mixed with Coke or ginger ale — is that the finish barely exists beneath all that proofing water. What’s the solution to that? Buy a Jack Daniel’s Bonded. It’s the same thing at 50% ABV. It rules.
But we’re not here to talk about Jack Daniel’s Bonded. Old No. 7 is really all about those highballs with Coke or soda. The team at Jack Daniel’s knows that and leans into it. The fruits are pronounced enough to really add something to a spicy Coke, sharp ginger ale, or fresh lemonade. It’s utilitarian and you feel it through and through when you drink Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7.
Ranking:
80/100 — This is a solid B whiskey. Trust me when I say that there’s a metric shitton of terrible whiskeys out there that taste far worse than this. This is a solid B because it delivers exactly what’s promised while being 100% easy to source everywhere on earth (seriously) and very cheap whenever you do find it.
At its best, fast food breakfast isn’t just a convenient early morning pickup — it’s actually worth waking up for. Little in the fast food space can be described as “exciting.” Everyone loves a great bacon cheeseburger but have too many in a single month and pretty soon you actually start saying stuff like “I’m tired of bacon cheeseburgers. What else can we eat?” But breakfast? Breakfast is another story.
We’ve mentioned this in the past but the joy we feel over a good fast food breakfast comes down to the category’s scarcity. At most food chains, breakfast is only available until 10:30 AM. This tiny availability window makes scoring a sausage McMuffin feel like an achievement. We’ve broken down the best breakfast sandwiches in the past; now it’s time to search for the best hash brown (or breakfast potato order) to accompany it.
To find the greatest breakfast potato order in the fast food universe, we put five big brands to the blind taste test!
Methodology:
If you’ve read our double cheeseburger or breakfast sandwich blind taste tests, you’ll know that I have a quick and easy route carved out in my neighborhood that allows me to hit up five different fast food restaurants in just 15 minutes. So I hit my trusty route and arrived back home with my potatoes still warm and steamy.
Here is today’s lineup!
Carl’s Jr. — Hash Rounds
Chick-fil-A — Hash Browns
Jack In The Box — Hash Brown
McDonald’s — Hash Brown
Wendy’s — Seasoned Potatoes
Once home, I had my girlfriend bring me one dish from our lineup at a time, tasted the potato, and recorded some voice notes on my phone. Most of these breakfast potatoes are of the hash brown variety, except for one, Wendy’s, which serves potato wedges that are lightly battered and heavily seasoned. Aside from that, all but two are completely different in shape — so I made sure to eat each under the cover of a blindfold so I wouldn’t have a guess as to which was which.
Part 1: The Tasting
Taste 1:
Ashley Garcia
Okay, I know these aren’t hash browns — they’re soft. That isn’t to say they don’t have any crunch, it’s a bit crispy but nowhere near hash brown territory. The flavor is excellent, I’m getting heavy black pepper notes, a bit of slightly sweet caramelized garlic, and a lot of buttery potato flavor.
These potatoes are excellent.
Dare I say superior to a hash brown? We’ll see.
Taste 2:
Ashley Garcia
Light and crispy. There is a lot of buttery potato flavor here with a hint of salt and the perfect amount of crispiness. It has a mildly, addictive, sweet finish. It seems like it was made to be dipped in ketchup!
Taste 3:
Ashley Garcia
Very nice form factor here, these are rounds and it slightly alters the ratio of crispy outer to potato in a way that a bigger hash brown can’t. I’m getting some buttery potato flavor but with a focus on the crispy texture per bite.
Ultimately, where you rank this one is going to come down to how crispy you like your hash browns. I’m still on the fence.
Taste 4:
Ashley Garcia
I like this one but it feels very indulgent. It’s very salty and crispy, and there is a top note of grease that permeates each bite. It tastes more like salt and grease than potato, and while my taste buds are liking that, my brain is resisting the urge to think of this as “good.”
Taste 5:
Ashley Garcia
After the salty assault on the taste buds that was Taste 4, I’m getting nothing here! Everything about this hash brown is just wrong — the texture is soft and squishy, there is no crunch, and it just barely tastes like potato.
It’s all texture and no flavor, and it can’t even do the texture part right.
Part 2: The Ranking
5. Chick-fil-a — Hash Browns (Taste 5)
Ashley Garcia
I’m genuinely surprised by this, not because I’m a Chick-fil-A fanboy (far from it, I actively root for this brand to lose like I do for BK to win) but because Chick-fil-A does just about everything they do… pretty damn well. Credit where credit is due, Chick-fil-A has an amazing batting average.
Great chicken sandwiches, good fries, great breakfast sandwiches, great milkshakes, hell, even their fountain Coke tastes delicious. But these hash browns? Absolute worst in the game. They don’t taste fried so much as they do steamed. They come across as school cafeteria tater tots.
The Bottom Line:
Probably Chick-fil-A’s biggest failure. If you need a side to go with your Chick-fil-A breakfast, just get a buttered biscuit or ask for an order of waffle fries, they’ll make them at any time.
I don’t know what’s going on with the frying oil at Jack in the Box, but for some reason no matter what you order from JiB, it all smells the same. There is this strange almost rancid grease smell that stains all of their food — just change your oil, guys!
That sounds really really bad, but… it often still tastes good. In spite of this or even, in part, because of it.
The curly fries? Amazing. The Mozzarella sticks? Got to have them. Those Bacon Cheddar Potato Wedges? Please, bring them back. That greasy smell is all over the hash brown, it’s a pure grease sponge. I kind of like it, but not enough to rank it high on this list.
The Bottom Line:
The saltiest, greasiest hash brown in the fast food universe.
Carl’s Jr.’ s Hash Rounds are what Chick-fil-A was going for with theirs. Though instead of these being a floppy, soggy, flavorless mess, these rounds manage to be perfectly crispy while still tasting like soft buttery potatoes.
I like these a lot, they’re delicious, but I don’t love the form factor. With rounds, you get a different ratio of crisp to potato and while I love a good crunch I’d rather have more of that fluffy potato texture.
The Bottom Line:
If you like the tiny bite-sized form factor, it doesn’t get better than this.
McDonald’s Hash Brown is probably the reason hash browns are even a menu staple in fast food breakfast. These things are by all accounts amazing, they’re crispy, salty, oily but not to the point of being off-putting — McD’s changes their oil famously often post Supersize Me — and delicious, offering a fluffy and buttery potato flavor and a nice audible crunch in every bite.
It’s also hackable, you can slide one of these into any of McDonald’s sandwiches and the result will be a much better sandwich. But at the end of the day, as good as this is, it’s not the best breakfast potato option in fast food in my opinion.
The Bottom Line:
A perfect fast food breakfast snack. If you explicitly want a hash brown and aren’t interested in the form factor of our number 1 choice, this is the no-brainer choice.
I love it when a blind taste test falls in order — each potato I tried was slightly worse than the last, making my very first taste the best experience of the five.
Ranking this one number is going to make a lot of people mad, but, bring it on. Sure, Wendy’s Seasoned Potatoes might not be hash browns, but this is a better form factor and provides a better flavor than any other breakfast side.
What you lose in crunch, you gain in flavor. This mix of cracked black pepper and garlic powder beats the salt, grease, and crunch combination that every hash brown delivers. It tastes so damn good that Wendy’s has no excuse to keep this a breakfast exclusive. If you could order these wedges at lunch and dinner time, Wendy’s wouldn’t even sell French fries anymore — they’re that good.
The Bottom Line:
Aside from the black pepper and garlic combination, the Seasoned Potatoes taste more like actual potatoes than any hash brown we tasted. They’re fluffy with a greater emphasis on the natural buttery flavor of fried potato.
Hash brown purists are going to hate, but if you want the best potato side in all of fast food breakfast, make it these Seasoned Potatoes every time.
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ERAS TOUR MN (@tessmhanson) 
