Starbucks Traditional Sausage Sandwich

The Starbucks Traditional Sausage Sandwich costs £5.60 and carries 495 calories with 28g of fat and 2g of salt. Pork sausages in a buttered soft roll, the sausage filled into natural beef casing.

At 495 calories it is the heaviest breakfast on the menu, and 28g of fat is more than double the bacon roll's 13g. Sausage meat carries considerably more fat than bacon does once bacon has been fried and the fat rendered off, which is the opposite of what most people assume when comparing the two.

Salt at 2g is a third of the adult daily maximum, marginally below the bacon roll at 2.3g. Between them these two are the saltiest items in the category, and anyone eating one regularly is starting the day a third of the way to the limit. Protein is 20g and saturated fat 10g, which is half an adult day's worth.

The natural beef casing is worth explaining, since it appears on the menu with an asterisk and no context. A natural casing is the traditional intestinal casing that gives a sausage its snap when you bite it; the alternative is a collagen or cellulose casing, which is uniform but soft. It also means the sausage is not suitable for anyone avoiding beef, despite the filling being pork.

Pork content is the thing to ask a butcher about and the thing a menu never states. A sausage at 70 percent pork tastes meaty; one at 42 percent, which is legal and common, tastes of rusk and seasoning. Starbucks does not publish the figure, and the fat content here at 28g suggests a reasonably rich sausage rather than a bulked one.

Two sausages split lengthways is the standard build, and the split matters more than it sounds. A whole sausage in a soft roll rolls out at the first bite; split flat, it grips the bread and stays where it was put. Stores that split them are not being decorative.

Allergens are barley, wheat and milk. Prices reach £6.50 on delivery. The Smoked Bacon Roll is the lighter meat option at 400 calories, and the porridge is the lightest breakfast at 233.