If you want to lose weight, (and who isn't?) it may seem like a good idea to trade candy bars for granola bars or to swap bacon and eggs at breakfast for the classic bagel (it’s shaped like a zero; how bad could it be?).
Sadly, it’s just not that simple. Customers’ nutrition knowledge is rising, so food marketers are desperate to attract the right kind of attention from the public. So they’re twisting nutritional buzzwords to trick us into eating the kinds of foods that often actually help make us fat. We need to be more careful than ever to make sure we’re feeding ourselves and our families the very best real health foods — not sugar-infused calorie bombs disguised as weight-loss foods.

 Read up for our latest batch of dietary phonies.


Granola Bar - 
200 calories
 15 g sugars
 


Eat this instead! 
1 oz cheddar cheese with Triscuits
 -150 calories
 and 5 g sugars.

Have you
 
ever wondered what keeps a granola bar together? The answer: high-fructose corn syrup, which quickly raises blood sugar and cancels out most of the potential benefits the granola almonds and oats might give you. Switch over to good old-fashioned cheese and crackers, and you trade sugar and calories for protein and fiber. It's a big deal that will make you smaller, as will steering clear of the sugar bombs. By the way, these are the most sugar-packed foods in America.

Yogurt with Fruit on the Bottom - 
190 calories
 and 30 g sugars
 


Eat this instead!
 Plain yogurt with fresh fruit mixed in
 - 110 calories
 and 15 g sugars
 
.

Pass on these over-sweetened yogurt cups; they contain as much sugar as a soft drink. Almost all of that comes directly from the “fruit,” which is swimming in high-fructose corn syrup. Yogurt and fruit can be a great way to start your day, but do it yourself by mixing a cup of nonfat plain yogurt with a half cup of mixed berries.

Bagel with Cream Cheese - 
700 calories
 and 40 g fat of which 
13 g saturated
 


Eat this instead!
 Cheese omelet
 - 425 calories
 and 18 g
 of which 6 g saturated
.


Bagels are bogus. The bread is bad enough, containing 300 calories and 60 grams of carbohydrates, but tack on the liberal cream cheese schmear (popular breakfast chains report up to 4 ounces for a single bagel!) and your "harmless" breakfast sandwich weighs in as worse than a Whopper. The omelet swap will save you nearly 300 calories, plus provide a surge of metabolism-boosting protein. And a recent study from the University of Connecticut found that eating eggs can help raise HDL (good) cholesterol.

Dried Fruit
 - 175 calories and 
45 g sugars
 


Eat this instead!
 Fresh fruit, like an apple or a peach
 - 70 calories
 and15 g sugars
 
.

OK, so dried fruit won’t totally derail a day of good eating (unless you down the whole bag of banana chips), but it’s far from being a harmless snack. First, because the dehydrating process sucks most of the volume from the fruit, you can eat cups of the stuff, and 600 calories later, still not feel any fuller. More troubling, though, is the fact that Sun-Maid and Ocean Spray add sugar to the fruit, making Craisins closer to candy than Mother Nature’s original intention. The choice is clear: Stick to the original, straight from the tree.
 


Fish Sandwich - 
600 calories
 and 30 g fat of which 
11 g saturated



Eat this instead!
 Grilled chicken sandwich - 
300 calories
 and13 g fat
 of which 4 g saturated
. 


Fish is good for you, except when it’s battered, fried, robed in cheese, and bathed in tartar sauce. The lesson? Even the biggest star can be sabotaged by the supporting cast. To this end, avoid any menu item with the word "crispy," the restaurant industry’s favorite euphemism for “fried.” Make sure your next fish or chicken sandwich is grilled, dressed with fresh produce, and topped with a low-cal barbecue sauce, or even ketchup and mustard. And watch the salt.

Stick margarine (1 Tbsp)
 100 calories and 
11 g fat
 of which 2.5 g saturated
 and 2.5 g transfat
 .

Eat this instead!
 Whipped butter (1 Tbsp)
 50 calories with 
6 g fat
 and 1.5 g saturated
 .


In their haste to remove saturated fat from butter, margarine makers created the margarine monster — a dangerous lipid called trans fat, with more dangerous links to heart disease than saturated fat. Pick up whipped butter instead; by whipping air into the spread, manufacturers decrease the caloric density of a tablespoon of butter, and they make it easier to top your toast. If you buy margarine, make sure it’s the type found in the tub, hopefully with an added bonus like omega-3s folded into the mix.

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