Diet Foods That Will Make You Fat Part 2

Fat-free cookies: Fat-free doesn’t mean calorie-free. It doesn’t even mean reduced-calorie, and fat-free products contain other ingredients, usually sugar, to make up for the texture and flavor lost when the fat is removed. Most fat-free cookies contain as many calories as the original cookie, which doesn’t make them a diet food.
Read the label. If you want a cookie, have one. That’s ONE cookie occasionally. Otherwise, a great “diet” treat is sugar-free, fat-free chocolate or vanilla pudding, which you can count as a serving of dairy.

Diet Bread: Diet breads, diet crackers or other bread products may be the same product, only portioned differently. Bread labeled “25-percent fewer calories” than the regular version may merely be sliced 25-percent thinner. Read the label and compare the weight of the serving. “Lite” bread usually refers to the color and does not indicate its fiber content. Sometimes breads are colored with caramel, molasses or brown sugar. Choose bread made from 100-percent whole-wheat flour with a minimum of 4 grams of fiber per serving.

Olive oil: Olive oil has a better nutritional profile than butter and especially margarine because of the low ratio of saturated fat and because it contains no trans fats. However, olive oil, although a healthy fat, is fat. All fat contains approximately 9 calories per gram, or about 45 calories in one teaspoon. Include olive oil as a part of a healthy diet, but don’t eat more than you need.

Protein Bars: Protein bars, breakfast bars and cereal bars are all convenient, but if you’re trying to lose weight, choose carefully. Most contain too much sugar and hydrogenated fat to be called healthy and more resemble candy bars than breakfast. I prefer quick and portable breakfasts and snacks of real food, such as stirring a cup of unsweetened cereal into a cup of yogurt, a half-sandwich on whole-grain bread with turkey breast, or a portioned serving of nuts and raisins.
If you’re pressed for time or need something that won’t spoil, read the label and make an educated choice. The first ingredient should either be a whole grain or a protein source (whey or soy protein). Ignore bars with refined sugar as one of the top listed ingredients (sucrose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, or any other syrup).
If you see hydrogenated fat in the ingredients and more than 1 gram of saturated fat in the nutrition facts panel, forget it. A good meal replacement bar contains about 300 calories, with approximately 25 percent from protein (approximately 19 grams of protein), nearly 0 grams of saturated fat and less than 10 grams of total fat. The higher the fiber, the better; that means it contains whole grain. Aim for a minimum of 4 grams per serving.

Low-Carb Beer: If you think that low-carb beer is a diet food, think again. Neither low-carb nor “lite” beers are low in calories. The USDA defines low calorie as a food that has no more than 40 calories per serving. Low-carb and “lite” beers have about 90 to 100 calories per serving. A low-carb beer is relatively low in carbohydrates, but calories count. Drink one beer with two water chasers.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows the following definitions on food labels:
FAT-FREE: The product has less than .5 grams of fat per serving.
LOW-FAT: The product has 3 grams or less of fat per serving.
REDUCED or LESS FAT: The product has at least 25% less fat per serving than the full-fat version.
CALORIE-FREE: The product has less than 5 calories per serving.
LOW-CALORIE: The product has 40 calories or less per serving.
REDUCED or FEWER CALORIES: The product has at least 25 percent fewer calories per serving than the non-reduced version.

LITE or LIGHT:
* The product has fewer calories or half the fat of the non-light version.
* The sodium content of a low-calorie, low-fat food is 50 percent less than the non-light version.
* A food is clearer in color (like light instead of dark corn syrup).