Harry Kersh: From calorie count to portion sizes,
we wanted to find out all the differences
between Taco Bell in the US and the UK.
This is "Food Wars."
Joe Avella: Taco Bell.
We're talking tacos.
At the US Taco Bell,
you can get an individual hard-shell taco,
or you can get three
with a drink. I went with medium.
Or you can get a party pack, which is 12.
Yeah, get a load of this.
It's like I'm presenting a newborn. [laughs]
Aw.
Harry: The serving sizes for tacos in the UK
are one individual taco,
or...
two tacos, fries, and a drink, which is a combo meal.
Joe: This is a US beef taco supreme.
First thing I'm gonna do is measure it.
Hang on. Oh, man.
It's almost exactly 6 inches.
All right.
Let's weigh it.
New scale!
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, what is it?
Oh, we're over 100 grams.
Harry: This is a crunchy beef taco supreme in the UK.
It measures exactly 5 inches across,
and it weighs 70 grams.
Joe: Wow. That's way heavier.
What is up?
Harry: This is a standard burrito in the UK.
We've gone for crispy chicken.
Joe: I also went with chicken.
Harry: It measures 6 1/2 inches in length.
Joe: Oh, you know what?
6 1/2 inches.
Harry: And it weighs...
about 210 grams.
Joe: 230.
Here's our quesadilla.
It is...
yo, dude, it's a foot!
12 inches!
Harry: This is a UK chicken quesadilla.
It measures 10 inches in length,
and it weighs...
245 grams.
Joe: Yeah, about 245.
Weighs the same. Wider.
Harry: ♪ Crunchwrap Supreme ♪
This is a Crunchwrap Supreme in the UK.
It measures 6 inches point to point,
and it weighs...
about 240 grams.
Joe: What's six sides?
Without looking it up,
does anyone know what a six-sided shape is?
Hey, Siri.
What is a six-sided shape?
Siri: According to Giantbomb.com,
regular hexagons are six-sided.
Joe: Hexagons!
Yo, dude, guess how many inches.
6, baby.
That is, obviously, that's on purpose.
I wonder if there is something about six sides, 6 inches.
[spooky music]
If this thing weighs 666 grams,
I will never not eat these.
Here we go.
275 for the hexagon Crunchwrap Supreme.
Six sides, 6 inches.
Harry: What's the biggest thing on the UK menu?
Well, for us, it's the Classic Cravings Meal for six.
Joe: In the US, biggest thing on the menu,
remember this guy?
Taco party pack.
Harry: The Classic Cravings Meal for six
comes with two quesadillas,
two beef Crunchwrap Supremes, two Volcano burritos,
two portions of nachos BellGrande,
and then six beef tacos
and three portions of cinnamon twists for dessert.
Joe: As you can see, it's just 12 tacos.
I know that seems very simple, but sometimes,
simplicity is the best.
12 tacos, you can get them either
hard shell or soft shell,
regular or supreme, at least half of them
I know you can get as Doritos Tacos Locos.
If you don't know what that is,
you'll find out a little bit later here in the US.
Harry: Let's take a look at some of the
nutritional info for Taco Bell,
starting with the basics.
In the UK, a plain crunchy beef taco
is 159 calories and has 308 milligrams of sodium.
Joe: In the US, our crunchy beef taco
is 170 calories.
Harry: A chicken quesadilla in the UK
is a hefty 529 calories.
Joe: Our quesadilla actually has less calories.
"Only" 510.
But it still has more sodium.
It actually has almost more than half
of your daily allowance.
Harry: Thud.
While in the UK, a Crunchwrap has 578 calories,
but shockingly, it has 60%
of your daily saturated fat allowance.
Joe: In the US, our hexagram is 530 calories
and has about 6 grams of fat less than the one in the UK.
But, surprising no one, ours has more sodium.
As is always the case in the US,
you have to look at the beverages.
This right here is a large Mountain Dew Baja Blast.
This is 30 ounces of a liquid
that is the most unnatural green I've ever seen.
It glows in the dark.
It's so bright, when I close my eyes I can still see it,
like when you look at the sun.
This beverage has over 420 calories.
That is ridiculous. I gotta take a sip.
Oh, my God.
This has roughly 110 grams of sugar.
It's an absurd amount of sugar.
Oh, God. It's like, it's horrible,
yet I'm addicted to it.
So, I wanted to see exactly what
110 grams of sugar looks like.
And to do so...
get out of my face.
We got this and this.
Come on, are you serious?
I'm not even halfway there.
Yeah, OK, there we go.
This is in that.
America, this is too much sugar.
I get it.
This thing, it's just....
Ah.
Man!
I hate that so much.
Harry: Let's start with the ingredients for the basics.
In the UK, a flour tortilla contains the following.
Fortified wheat flour,
made with wheat flour, calcium carbonate,
iron, niacin, and thiamin;
[fast-forwarding] water; vegetable oils,
which are palm oil and rapeseed oil;
raising agents E500, E450, and E296;
sugar; emulsifier E471; salt;
[normal speed] and a flour treatment agent, E920.
Joe: [blubbering]
Here we go.
In the US, our flour tortillas
have enriched wheat flour; water;
vegetable shortening, which is soybean,
hydrogenated soybean, and/or cottonseed oil;
[fast-forwarding] sugar; salt; leavening — baking soda,
sodium acid pyrophosphate; molasses;
dough conditioner, which is fumaric acid,
distilled monoglycerides? Yeah. Enzymes, vital wheat gluten,
cellulose gum, wheat starch, calcium carbonate; calcium;
[normal speed] pra-po-nee-ate. Pra-po-nee-ate.
Pro-po-nate. Proponate. Propionate.
That's a tough one.
Sorbic acid and/or potassium sorbate.
Harry: These lists might look quite different,
but actually a lot of it's just under terminology.
For example, the UK menu tends to use E numbers,
whereas the US menu tends to refer
to things by their full chemical names.
Joe: Yeah, it's a good distinction to make, Harry,
but is it better? I don't know.
What sounds worse, E450 or pyrophosphate?
Pyrophosphate is a scary-sounding chemical.
E450 sounds like a "Star Wars" droid.
I don't think it really makes
much of a difference, personally.
Harry: What about some meat options?
Well, in the UK, 72% of the beef is beef,
and the rest is made up of beef fat,
maltodextrin, tomato powder, paprika, cumin,
black pepper, salt, chili powder, garlic powder,
onion powder, yeast extract, oregano, cocoa powder,
flavor enhancer E635, cellulose, salt,
stabilizers E451 and E452.
Joe: And in the United States,
our beef contains beef.
Imagine that.
Water, seasoning, which is cellulose, chili pepper,
maltodextrin, salt, oats, soy lecithin, spices,
tomato powder, sugar, onion powder, citric acid,
natural flavors, new set of brackets,
(including smoke flavor), close them brackets,
torula yeast, cocoa, disodium inosinate,
and
[sighs]
what is this word?
Whatever.
It looks like it's pretty much the same thing
you guys got there in the UK.
One thing we need to note about the US Taco Bell menu
is that items like the Baja Blast
and the Doritos Tacos Locos,
I think the shells have an ingredient
called Yellow No. 5.
Yellow No. 5 is not in the UK.
Of course it's in the US.
Harry: In the UK, you usually find Yellow 5
referred to as tartrazine.
It's on a list of six chemicals
which, when added to food,
must contain the following warning:
"May have an adverse effect on activity
and attention in children."
Joe: And according to the FDA, in some cases,
it causes itching and hives in people who eat it.
Disgusting.
[laughs]
Itching and hives, yep, that's fine.
Hey, I ate it growing up, and I'm perfectly fine.
I should note that I have a full head
of gray hair, and I just turned 23.
Harry: Here is everything you can only find
on the menu at a UK Taco Bell.
Joe: This is everything you could only get
at a US Taco Bell.
Harry: So, we only have the one exclusive taco.
And it's this one,
which is the crispy chicken soft taco.
What it is, is pretty much just a standard taco
with the lettuce, the cheese, the sour cream,
but then we've kind of got one of these breaded
crispy chicken fillets in the middle as well.
Joe: First thing, which is right in front of me,
I've talked about this twice already.
It is the party pack.
We've already met the Baja Blast.
Oh, man, I hate it so much.
One thing that I love at Taco Bell,
the Doritos Locos tacos. What is it?
It is a taco that the shell is a Dorito.
See that?
Made of the same stuff.
Harry: Now, we actually have a bunch
of exclusive burrito options in the UK.
We'll start with this one, which is the Volcano burrito.
Now, apparently this used to be on the menu in the US,
but it's no longer there.
What it is, is basically just, like,
a beef and rice burrito.
There's some sour cream cheese in there as well
and some crunchy tortilla chips.
And I think it gets the name Volcano
because it's got the lava sauce in there,
so it's quite spicy.
Joe: Yes, Harry, the Volcano burrito was available
in the US for a limited time.
It was a promotional menu item
for the 1995 box-office bomb "Congo,"
based on the Michael Crichton book.
RIP to my boy Michael Crichton.
Harry: Here, we have a beefy nacho griller,
which is a fantastic name.
What this is, is just beef and crushed nacho chips
with some cheese sauce in a burrito.
Here, we've got the double cheesy black bean burrito,
which, as the name suggests, has two types of cheese.
It's got the nacho cheese
and also the shredded cheese in there,
as well as some rice and black beans.
Here, we have the seven-layer burrito.
We have another exclusive crispy chicken option,
which is a crispy chicken burrito.
And then, finally, we have the spicy chicken griller.
Not bad.
It does just kind of taste like
something that I could make at home.
Joe: There's a bunch of burritos.
I'm gonna try and figure out what these burritos are
without, like, completely ripping them apart.
This right here.
Oh, beef Quesarito.
Somehow they combined a burrito and a quesadilla,
and it's this light-brown brick.
If you don't want beef, you wanna go vegetarian,
they also have a black bean Quesarito.
This looks like five-layer burrito.
I didn't know this until I had to do this video,
but there's no seven-layer burrito in America anymore.
They took out two layers, and I get the five-layer one.
[grunts] What is this?
Well, all these just look the same.
Grilled cheese burrito.
That sounds awesome.
Who doesn't like grilled cheese?
And these two that are left here,
one of them is a cheesy bean and rice burrito,
and the other one is a burrito supreme.
That's one of these two.
I don't know which is which.
We also have steak quesadillas,
which, unfortunately the Taco Bell
that I went to did not have them.
This big thing right here,
I love this. Look at this.
This is the nacho party pack.
It's exactly what it sounds like.
Get a good look, UK.
This is what nachos are supposed to look like.
Harry: What we lack in nachos,
we more than make up for in fries.
We love fries in the UK.
Obviously, we call them chips.
But it's very unusual to walk into a fast-food restaurant
and not be able to find them,
so I think Taco Bell have kind of tried
to cash in on that in the UK.
Basically your standard fries, but then they have
a kind of fajita seasoning on them as well.
You can get them in three sizes.
Regular fries,
then you have the fries supreme,
and then finally you have the fries BellGrande,
which is the biggest size.
We ordered one deconstructed
and one constructed just to see the difference.
Joe: Mexican pizza.
They were saying for a while
that these were gonna be taken off the menu.
We still got them in a couple locations, apparently.
I got my hands on one.
Look at this guy.
Oh, this right here, the power bowl, the protein bowl.
This is actually a really good idea for them.
It's just all protein, no carbs.
Harry: Now, the only side that seems to be exclusive
to the UK is actually just a little bowl of rice.
For some reason, I couldn't find this on the US menu.
If I was wrong, let me know.
Joe: What everyone in the UK
has been waiting for! [drumroll]
Taco Bell breakfast, yes!
I think, of all the fast-food breakfasts-es,
Taco Bell's is the best.
These are the items that you can get here in America,
and they are all great.
The cheesy toasted breakfast burrito.
The hash brown toasted burrito.
The grande toasted breakfast burrito.
Another one I wanna point out here
is the breakfast Crunchwrap Supreme.
Of course, we all know this shape.
Hexagon?
They're like the regular burritos
you would get at Taco Bell,
but they have eggs in them.
Sometimes they have bacon, a pico de gallo.
They're all very good. Very, very good.
Harry: I'm really sad that we don't have
any breakfast items in the UK,
but what we do have is churros for dessert.
These can be served with a little pot of
dulce de leche to dip in.
And, honestly, I'm shocked that you guys don't have these.
[crunching]
Joe: For the US Taco Bell desserts,
the one thing we got here you can't get in the UK
are these Cinnabon Delights.
They're like little cinnamon balls.
You can get them in either an order of two
or 12 or any number in between.
Oh, my God.
There's cream inside of these. I was not expecting that.
Exclusive drinks in the US.
This one is a dragon fruit freeze.
That was like a Slurpee.
You can also get Powerade.
They got fruit punch Powerade on tap.
Right here, pink lemonade.
And for the
[laughs]
Baja Blast frie-- ah, fiends,
they also have a Baja Blast freeze.
Yuck.
In the US, our Taco Bell also has
iced coffee and iced tea.