When it comes to bang for your buck and gross tonnage is the measure, it’d be hard to beat this 6.7-ounce burrito for 99 cents.

Here’s the blueprint: crunchy nacho chips, covered in warm nacho cheese sauce, 100 percent real seasoned beef and cool reduced-fat sour cream, all wrapped snug and tight in a warm flour tortilla.

What a country, where a nationwide restaurant chain has to assure customers it’s using “real” beef. Then again, I’ve seen pizza spinners promise that they use “real” cheese. There may be a trust issue somewhere along the food chain. “Real tomato ketchup, Eddie?”

Total calories: 470. Fat grams: 20. Sodium: 990 mg. Dietary fiber: 4 g. Carbs: 58 g. Manufacturer’s suggested retail price: 99 cents.

The Beefy Nacho Burrito delivers the experience of eating loaded nachos at the ballpark or movie theater (there’s a brilliant idea — the floor isn’t sticky enough already?), but adds the conveniences of neatness and portability. The beef-and-cheese-and-chips gook is delivered in a leak-proof tortilla. You have to work to get this all over your mouth and chin. Your kids in the backseat will have no problem beating the burrito firewall, however.

The Beefy Nacho Burrito scores several major points: First and most important, it’s a Taco Bell burrito, and it tastes pretty darn terrific. Everything inside the tortilla goes together. It packs that distinctive T-Bell flavor, just like the Bell’s 14 other burritos.

This burrito also is a major bargain. Depending on your appetite and pride, one or two will handle lunch with no problem. This is designed for Taco Bell’s core market of hungry bargain hunters. I can see a Volkswagen Bug packed with eight ravenous teenagers ordering about a million of these at 1 a.m. Saturday morning — that is, if one of them can stop texting long enough to place the order.

One downer is, if you don’t scarf down this burrito as soon as you pull out of the drive-thru, the chips get soggy. The Beefy Nacho Burrito loses the mouth-feel of crispy chips, and isn’t that the whole idea? They can’t sell day-old, soggy burritos for half price. If you scarf them in multiples, even if you’re a fast eater, the last burrito won’t have the same curb appeal as the first. It’s the eighth slice of pizza — still satisfying, but ah that first bite. Memories.

The most important drawback is: The Beefy Nacho Burrito doesn’t match its cousin from last year, the Beefy Crunchy Burrito, for wow factor. The blueprints are nearly identical, except the Crunchy had Flamin’ Hot Fritos Strips instead of the Beefy Nacho Burrito’s rather ordinary, school-lunch-variety chips. Taco Bell fans jump at “Flamin’.”

One way to even the score: Ask for a packet of Taco Bell’s Fire Border Sauce for your Beefy Nacho Burrito. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

(c) 2012 by King Features Syndicate.