Granola Bar: 200 calories15 g sugars - Eat this instead! 1 oz cheddar cheese with Triscuits: 150 calories 5 g sugars -- Yogurt with Fruit on the Bottom: 190 calories 30 g sugars - Eat this instead! Plain yogurt with fresh fruit mixed in 110 calories 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 40 g fat 13 g saturated - Eat this instead! Cheese omelet 425 calories 18 g - 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 (by our survey of popular breakfast chains, 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 45 g sugars. Eat this instead! Fresh fruit, like an apple or a peach 70 calories 15 g sugar. 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 30 g fat 11 g saturated. Eat this instead! Grilled chicken sandwich 300 calories 13 g fat 4 g saturated. Fish is good for you, except when it’s battered, fried, robed in cheese, and bathed in tartar sauce. 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 11 g fat 2.5 g saturated 2.5 g trans fat. Eat this instead! Whipped butter (1 Tbsp) 50 calories 6 g fat 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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