"diet foods" news and stories

There's a new Nestle formula in the works, and it's quite a trick: Design food that will make us feel fuller quicker and stay feeling full longer. Given the high obesity rates in America, this might sound like a good thing, but listen to how it works.

Scientists of the Swiss chocolate company are trying to understand how your "gut brain" works by learning the language of digestion, reports the Wall Street Journal. To figure this out, they've designed a million-dollar see-through model of the human stomach. Then they fed it foods like regular olive oil and olive oil with monoglycerides, and found that the latter, while making you feel more full could also prove more difficult for the stomach to digest. So they're tinkering with this knowledge to come up with what they hope will be the best of both worlds -- foods that tell your brain you're full and your stomach to feel healthy and satisfied.

New products could hit shelves within the next five years, in many forms other than chocolate. Nestle also produces drinks, bottled water, cereal, coffee, frozen foods and pet food. While we have to admit it's interesting to be able to track how our bodies respond to food at every stage, tricking it might be a slippery slope we're not prepared to handle. Candy bar, anyone?

Is that low-fat yogurt and raisin granola truly healthier for you than a full-fat yogurt and a bowl of Cocoa Puffs? It's important to read the labels, reports the Sweet Beet blog at the Huffington Post. When you take into account sugars, calories, and even chemicals, the foods labeled as better for you may not be such a sweet deal after all. Turns out there are artificial colors in the yogurt, and 16 grams of sugar in a mere 2/3-cup portion of the cinnamon-raisin granola. See the rogues' gallery of foods, and get the whole scoop at the Huffington Post.

After trying the Klondike Slim-a-Bear ice cream sandwiches and Skinny Cow, I think I may have finally found the "light" ice cream bar that will save my diet from ice cream diet crashes. The 80-calorie chocolate-covered ice cream bars from Healthy Choice are surprisingly better than both. The ice cream has the least "not like ice cream" texture of the three. It is softer and creamier. And while it isn't a direct comparison since the first two were sandwiches and this is a bar, the chocolate covering of this bar was notable in that it tasted even better to me than regular, non-diet bars because it was soft and actually melted like chocolate. Regular ice cream bars' chocolate covering is usually way too waxy.

Of course, it helps that two Healthy Choice ice cream bars at 80 calories each is only a few calories more than one sandwich. I feel like I get to eat more!

I think readers have also mentioned Blue Bunny, which I haven't been able to find yet in regular grocery stores. Any suggestions of where I could find Blue Bunny in Southern California? Heck, I'd even travel from LA to SD for ice cream!

Last week, I tried the Klondike brand Slim-a-Bear Ice Cream sandwiches in my early stages of a search for a "diet" ice cream that I could include with my Spring, ahem, lifestyle change. It wasn't horrible, but the Slim-a-Bear definitely tasted like it was intended to taste - "light."

A couple of commenters recommended the Skinny Cow low fat ice cream sandwiches, which I promptly snatched up at my local market, and they were right - much better than the Slim-a-Bear. The chocolate cake part tasted about the same, but I don't think it's the sandwich part that ever really packs on the fat and calories. The ice cream part was better. It certainly didn't taste like a smooth and creamy ice cream - it had the texture of a slightly icy frozen yogurt, which is much better than the melted-refrozen airy sponge texture of the Klondike bars. At 140 calories each, not a bad "diet" treat.