A breakfast sandwich is always a filling, satisfying way to begin the day--or, occasionally, end the night. One of the things I truly missed when I left New York City was the glory of the corner bodega breakfast sandwich. So, I'm always interested when one of the local West Coast, drive-thru, fast food franchise joints comes up with a new combo of bread, egg and cheese. The two most recent entries, Dunkin' Donuts' Egg White Turkey Sausage Flatbread Sandwich and Carl's Jr.'s Monster Breakfast Sandwich lie proudly at opposite ends of the spectrum. A clear-cut rivaly of health vs. indulgence, but what of taste?

The Dunkin Donuts' Egg White Turkey Sausage Flatbread Sandwich weighs in at a slender 280 calories. It was a little bland, more like an egg white frittata on toasted pita bread than anything else. I couldn't really taste that much cheese, sausage or spinach, although that may also have been because they had been mulched into wee little pieces and scattered throughout said frittata. The confetti effect was visually pleasing, but almost made everything too tiny to taste. Although that situation improved with a few dashes of hot sauce and, alongside an iced coffee, it made a decent, virtuous morning meal.

The Monster Breakfast Sandwich of Carl's Jr. is a bulky 730 calories, backed up by a stunning 47 grams of fat. How could it be any other way, with two eggs, two strips of bacon, a sausage patty, and Swiss and American cheeses on toasted sourdough bread? And you can taste every gooey component the same way you can also taste your own death coming closer with each artery-clogging Monster Breakfast Sandwich consumed. Still, it is a deeply satisfying experience of the dripping-with-egg-and-cheese, stuffed-with-processed-meats kind. But don't eat one if you're in a hurry at the beginning of a busy day: It takes a while to consume the Monster Breakfast Sandwich and you'll probably want to have a little lie down afterward.

So, in the final ruling, taste goes to the monster, practicality goes to the lengthily-named flatbread. An unsurprising result.