Be Honest About Diet Foods

Can you handle the truth about diet foods?

There is a famous court room scene in the military drama, A Few Good Men, where Jack Nicholson's character, Colonel Nathan Jessep, is asked to tell the truth under oath. Nicholoson shouts the infamous line, "You can't handle the truth!"

When it comes to certain food products on the grocery store shelves today, some of us can't handle the truth. We desperately want to believe that low-fat and processed diet foods can be an acceptable part of our daily food intake. Cereal bars, Weight Watcher's ice cream, low-fat cookies and baked crackers and potato chips fill the aisles of our neighborhood markets. We see and hear the advertisements for these products and we convince ourselves that we are making good choices. After all, the box says low in fat and calories, right? Wrong. Diet foods are simply not good alternatives for snacks and meals.

Be honest with yourself. If you read the nutrition labels, the facts speak the truth. Products that are marketed as low-fat tend to be high in sugar and/or sodium. Let's face it, fat tastes good. When you remove the majority of the fat, you have to replace the flavor with a substitute. Rarely is the replacement any better nutritionally than what was taken away.

Special K Fruit Crisps are high in sugar. You might as well eat a serving of regular cookies.

To illustrate the point, I purchased a box of Kellogg's newest low calorie offering, Special K Fruit Crisps and a box of regular generic peanut butter sandwich cookies. In a side-by-side comparison, the Fruit Crisps came in at 100 calories and 7 grams of sugar per serving (2 crisps). The peanut butter cookies, not marketed as a low-fat/low calorie item, are labeled as having 106 calories and less than 6 grams of sugar for the same number of cookies. Incidentally, the first two ingredients for both products are enriched flour and sugar. That should be a red flag.

While you are taking the time to peruse the nutritional information, check out the full list of ingredients. Can you pronounce the names of each ingredient? Do you know exactly what each ingredient actually is? I'm not inclined to consume something called Xanthan Gum. How about you?

Some may argue that they only indulge in small servings of these items. Items like 100 Calorie Packs are pretty enticing with their portion-controlled servings, but even a small portion of empty calories is not doing a body any favors. Our bodies need a limited number of quality calories from nutritionally dense foods each day in order to function at the highest level. Wasting those calories on foods that are not nutritionally sound doesn't make sense. For around the same number of calories that you would consume by eating the small quantity of cookies or crackers found in a 100 Calorie Pack or a low-fat ice cream treat you could have any of the following:

-2 cups of raspberries
-several stalks of celery and a tablespoon of peanut butter
-a serving of cottage cheese or Greek yogurt
-a smoothie made from 3/4 cup skim milk or soy milk and a few frozen berries
-an egg white and spinach omelette
-1/2 a red bell pepper with 3 tablespoons of hummus
-1/2 cup cooked oatmeal with a few raisins and walnuts
-1 small sweet potato
-5 oz. of skinless turkey breast
-3 cups of air popped popcorn
-1 cup of unsweetened applesauce sprinkled with cinnamon
-1 1/2 cups of honeydew melon
-canned tuna
-1/2 cup edamame

One of my favorite evening snacks is Greek yogurt topped with fresh berries or a few dried cherries and nuts.

Image via Rachelleb.com

If you are wondering, yes, I did taste the Fruit Crisps. They were sickeningly sweet and tasted like a stale Pop Tart. I ended up tossing it after the initial bite. If I am going to indulge, I'll make it a small portion of the real thing. I'd prefer an ounce of dark chocolate over two Fruit Crisps any day!

Do you have a favorite high quality snack?