Trying to get in 4 servings of fruit may seem daunting so why bother trying right?

Actually it’s not as much as you might think. A serving is only half a cup and it doesn’t take long for fruit to add up. It’s as easy as eating a large banana and a small apple. I was surprised by this myself – I thought a banana and apple would only add up to 2 servings but according to the information on mypyramid.gov a large banana is about 1 cup (two servings) and a small gala apple is about 1 cup (two servings).

But even though 4 servings isn’t that much fruit I’m one of those people that finds it hard to always get it in because fruit can go from fresh to “icky and rotten” in a hurry; and there’s nothing quite as horrible to eat as a piece of fresh fruit that tastes more like mealy cardboard than the apple or peach or strawberry that it’s supposed to be (like the strawberries I bought today that looked and smelled good but are crunchy-strawberries should NEVER be crunchy, and almost tasteless. That good deal of 2 quarts for $3 was a wasted $3).

So since drinking juice, as long as it’s real juice and not artificially flavored sugar water, counts as a serving of fruit I keep it around but still try to have fresh fruit be half my intake because there’s less calories and more fiber in fresh fruit.

There’s a new juice on the market to try that’s part juice and part fruit because it has bits of fruit in it, called Fruit2Day.

Each single serve bottle has between 110-120 calories and 2 servings of fruit. Plus there’s no added sugar and it’s all natural.

There’s currently 4 flavors:
Strawberry Orange
Pineapple Banana
Mango Peach
Cherry Grape

To find out if a store in your area has it yet, use the website’s “where to find it” gizmo.

If you can get your hands on it save yourself a little green and print out a $1 off coupon from the product website. The website says to “introduce a friend” to get the coupon but you can send the coupon to yourself (I tried it – put the same name and e-mail in both the “who I was” and “who my friend” was fields and got the coupon but if you have gmail it will think it’s spam so look for the coupon in that folder).

Are you going to try it?

They are shaped like a cereal bar but have a crispy outer shell and fruity filling that is similar to the Pop tarts I loved as a kid.

On the plus side:
- each foil wrapped packet of 2 crisps is 100 calories – an okay calorie count for a snack or for a light dessert
- there’s no high fructose corn syrup in them (I personally think high fructose corn syrup is horribly bad for us)
- they’re an easy-to-eat “on the go” snack
- the filling is tasty and there’s a decent amount of it

On the minus side:
- while the filling tastes good, the crispy outer shell is kind of bland
- they are not filling (less than 1 gram of fiber and only 1 gram of protein in each serving) so I don’t recommend eating them if you’re really hungry.
- there’s not much nutritional value in them (the aforementioned pitiful 1 gram of protein per serving and only 2 percent of the recommended daily allowance of iron)


They come in two flavors: strawberry and blueberry.
While I think the bars aren’t a great nutritional choice, they hit the spot when I’m looking for a little something sweet which would be obvious to you if you saw me right now since I’m writing this review while looking at the empty box.

Will I buy them again? Yeah, probably even though they’re not exactly healthy and nutritious. I love to have a little something sweet at night and it takes me a lot longer to eat these than it does to shovel in 100 calories worth of chocolate.

If you want to try them, print out this coupon first. You’ll save $1 off one package of either the strawberry or blueberry flavor. But don’t procrastinate! The coupon is only good until April 21, 2010.

What are your thoughts on the Special K fruit crisps? Have you tried them yet? If you did, did you like them? Will you buy them again?

There’s absolutely no redeeming nutritional value to them but they are a diet friendly option (the whole box is 1 Weight Watcher point) when I want a sweet taste in my mouth and am trying avoid inhaling a 600 calorie chocolate/caramel brownie (with powered sugar on top please).

But unlike what my new Weight Watchers leader said at my last meeting (when I truly think she was trying to blow smoke up everyone’s butt), they are not filling. She told us a little story about how she was recently delayed at the airport and was really hungry but didn’t want to eat very much because her husband was picking her up and taking her out to eat. So she said she popped 2 WW Fruities into her mouth and, tada, she was satisfied until mealtime (ummm…seriously…10 calories satisfied her hunger and got her to mealtime?).

While they will never be a hunger filler for me, they are a standby in my purse. The downsides though are that they aren’t sold in stores. You have to go to a Weight Watchers meeting location to buy them (but you don’t to be a member or join in order to purchase them). And, they aren’t cheap. In my area, a pack containing 2 single serve boxes is $2.50.

They come in three flavors; strawberry, blackberry and cherry. Strawberry is my favorite.

They’re another option that just might help you get over a “hump” in your day and stay on your diet.

The “full on” version of the Big Mac used to be my “go-to” sandwich when I wanted a fast food lunch (which was several times a week) “with a large diet Coke and fries please.”

But at 540 calories and 29 grams of fat just for the Big Mac sandwich (13 Weight Watchers points), it became a very infrequent treat when I got serious about weight loss (insert a big “sigh” here).

My mouth watered while watching the commercials last night (their advertising is very effective – darn it!) and I started thinking about how much I missed my beloved Big Macs. So today it was off to the McDonald’s drive-through for me (but only after working out first in case my mouth involuntarily uttered the words “with an order of fries please”).

At 330 calories and 19 grams of fat (8 Weight Watchers points) it’s an okay lunch option; but not all the time because it’s truthfully not enough food to fill me up. I need more bulk in my meals than that.

Is it worth the calories? If you’re a Big Mac lover, yes. It has the same taste as the Big Mac (it’s the sauce that does it for me) in a smaller size.

My only complaint is that there’s too much “wrap.” I still had a couple bites of the flour tortilla left after finishing the filling so I tossed it because plain flour tortilla is not worth the calories to me. In my opinion they could make the wrap a little smaller, saving some calories.

It’s nice to see a fast food restaurant offering lower calorie options although the sensible part of me knows that fast food should not be a daily option because even if calories can be kept in check the food is super high in sodium.

This stuff is great!

While any granola can be a calorie minefield if a person eats too much of it, I keep my portions under control by using it as a topping or a small snack rather than eating by the bowl.

My favorite way to have it is with fruit and yogurt; putting fresh cut up fruit in a bowl, topping it with a container of light yogurt; and sprinkling it with 2 or 3 tablespoons of the Galaxy Granola. To make the dish “company special” I layer the ingredients in a pretty clear glass.

One of the great things about Galaxy Granola is that you can try a free sample before you buy it.

Have you tried it?

What’s your favorite flavor?

For over yogurt and fruit mine is the “not sweet vanilla” because it has a delicious tasty crunch but doesn’t compete with the flavors of my yogurt and fruit. For a healthy snack I like the cranberry orange. It comes in two other flavors: raspberry and vanilla almond.

I chose the cinnamon thins to try after dutifully checking the points value of them before shoving them in my mouth.

The cookies are 1 Weight Watcher point each! How awesome is that? (but check points values for yourself to be sure).

The taste? They rock! The cinnamon thins are super yummy. They taste like snickerdoodle cookies – crunchy, sweet, and cinnamony (is that a word?)

Plus they don’t have any milk, eggs, peanuts or tree nuts and are certified gluten free so they are safe to eat for people with peanut allergies; people who need to avoid gluten; and are vegan friendly.

Besides being tasty (my number 1 criteria for food), I like that they don’t have trans fat, msg or preservatives and that they are a great “points friendly” treat.

My only problem is going to be finding the willpower to just eat 1 or 2 of the cookies at a time and not pig out and eat the whole bag of 4. But even if I do eat the whole bag today, it’s still only 4 points which is a lot better than the points it would cost me if I ate one of the red velvet cupcakes or cinnamon scones sitting prettily inside the Starbucks bakery case.

The only thing I don’t like about the cookies is the “nutrition facts” because the package has 1.3 servings. Seriously? I think that’s stupid. A lot of people are going to look at the package and assume that the nutrition info is for the whole package since it only contains 4 cookies. Most people are not going to eat 1 serving and then save the other .3 of the remaining serving for later on. That’s kind of misleading.

But, overall I think the cookies are great.

UPDATE ON 1/20/10 – tried the DrLucy sugar cookies at Starbucks today (also 1 Weight Watcher point each). They’re good; crunchy with a sweet taste and are very similar to the cinnamon thins I tried the other day – the only difference to me is that the sugar cookies don’t have the cinnamon taste to them. If you don’t like cinnamon these would be good cookies to try but since I’m a cinnamon lover I’ll stick with the cinnamon thins. Next up is giving the DrLucy’s chocolate chip cookies a try. That’s the third variety Starbucks is offering.

I wasn’t holding out much hope that it was going to taste good because what’s a taco without cheese? (which is why I only ordered one instead of two or three.)

But I was pleasantly surprised. It was really good (either that or I was really hungry).

I actually didn’t miss the cheese at all and I’m from Wisconsin where we pretty much think everything is better with cheese!

But, it’s not like I saved a ton of calories by ordering the fresco taco. According to Taco Bell’s nutrition guide I only saved 20 calories, and also saved 3 grams of fat.

But the calorie and fat savings was enough to cut the taco down from 4 Weight Watchers points to 3 Weight Watchers points (but always check points values yourself because nutrition information for food can change at any time). If I can save a point without feeling like I’m missing out on flavor I’ll do it so I’ll definitely go “freso style” the next time I go to Taco Bell (if I can resist the “siren call” of the Nachos Bel Grande).

Here’s the comparison of the two tacos:
Regular Taco Bell ground beef taco
170 calories
10 grams fat
330 milligrams sodium
12 grams carbs
3 grams fiber
8 grams protein
1 gram sugar (that stuff sneaks into just about everything)

Fresco style Taco Bell ground beef taco
150 calories
7 grams fat
350 milligrams sodium
13 grams carbs
3 grams fiber
7 grams protein
1 gram sugar (still has the sugar in it – my guess is that it’s in the shell)

One thing that jumped out at me when doing the comparison stats is that the fresco style taco, which is perceived to be healthier than the regular taco, is higher in sodium than a regular taco. While it’s a healthier option to me because I don’t have to watch my sodium, it definitely is not a better choice for someone like my Mom who has to watch her sodium intake carefully. Why is it that when a restaurant takes something away, like calories, it usually adds something else – typically sodium or sugar – instead? I hate that.

They’re new at my store and since I love chocolate, coffee and almonds they seemed like a home run.  And they were!

There’s big pieces of almond, dark chocolate chips and a yummy coffee taste.  BUT, if you don’t like coffee you probably won’t like these granola bars because the coffee flavor is definitely noticeable.

All that yumminess only costs 2 Weight Watchers points (but check the box yourself because serving sizes and ingredients can change).

Nutritionally each dark mocha almond granola bar contains:

130 calories

3.5 grams fat

4 grams fiber

6 grams protein

6 grams sugar

Kashi granola bars are my go-to item for a quick breakfast (along with a banana or an apple) or for an afternoon snack to hold me over until dinnertime.

What do I like about them?

- they contain whole grains

- no artificial sweeteners

- no high fructose corn syrup

- no partially hydrogenated fats

- no artificial ingredients

They’re tasty, a healthy snack, low in Weight Watchers points values, and they satisfy me – definitely a home run product!

Note: If you can’t find them in your local store, they are available online at Amazon.com

Plus there’s a free daily e-mail you can sign up for. I get the daily e-mails and really enjoy them. In addition to product reviews and recipes, there’s fun and silly news. That’s how I found out January 12 is National Curried Chicken Day (who decides this stuff?). If that’s not enough useless trivia for you, today – January 13 - is National Peach Melba day.

My favorite Hungry Girl newsletters are the ones with a “Fight It, Bite It” theme where the calorie/fat/sodium stats are given for a not so healthy food (some are truly horrifyingly bad).  But, instead of just being told to avoid that food there’s also a recipe or suggestion for a “bite it” swap – one that is lower in calories/sodium/fat; a.k.a. one that won’t contribute to jiggle arms and wide butt syndrome.

The mastermind behind the Hungry Girl website is Lisa Lillien.  She’s what I consider a “regular person” who has the same everyday struggles with weight and food that most of us deal with.  She started to share her ideas for lighter eating and now has published a couple cookbooks and has been a guest on shows such as Rachael Ray. 

I like that Lisa is a not a “scientific guru” – one of those people that preaches diet and exercise to lose weight and be healthy but has never been even an ounce overweight in their lives so they really have no idea what it’s like to struggle with food and weight loss. 

You may not like everything on Lisa’s website.  For example a lot of recipes rely on Fiber One cereal in one way or another and I personally am not a fan of it.  But if you find just one good tip that you can use to help you with your quest to lose weight or be healthier then the time spent looking at the website is time well spent, right?

Plain water just doesn’t do it for me and I don’t carry a toothbrush and toothpaste around in my pocket so that I can brush every couple of hours (it’s not convenient and it feels gross to me to brush teeth in public bathrooms).

But constantly reaching for something tasty to drink or something to eat can wreck any diet and it’s not always possible to do (it wouldn’t look good to pull a snack out of your pocket and start chewing away during an important meeting at work).

So I always keep sugar free gum with me, in my desk drawer, in my purse, in my computer bag, and in my vehicle. It gives me a good taste in my mouth, and at 5 calories a stick for most sugar free gums it’s hard for me to wreck my healthy eating plan even if I have one of those days where I’m chewing a whole pack.

My current favorite is Wrigley’s 5 gum in the Solstice flavor (a minty flavor different than any I’ve had before) and Elixer (a yummy berry flavor). The Flaire flavor is good too but you really gotta love cinnamon to enjoy that one.

I also like Trident Xtra Care gum in cool mint (whether or not it strengthens teeth like the package says I like to think I’m doing something good for my teeth while chomping away on it) and Orbit’s sweetmint and positively pomegranate flavors.

On the other hand, I think Orbit’s Mist gum is yucky. It has micro burst beads in it that are supposed to be hydrating but it just makes me think I got food into my gum which grosses me out. The mango surf flavor is the worst of the three they currently have – tastes like minty mango with chunks in it – ick!

Try stocking up on your favorite sugar free gums (try some new ones for variety) and chew away instead of chewing away on boatloads of brownies and chips Your thighs will thank you (and maybe also the coworker or friend you’re talking to when your breath is fresh and clean rather than stinky).