Happily, “diet” is no longer synonymous with tasteless, canned tuna fish and bland egg white omelets: Today’s body-conscious audience has many luscious, low-calorie, low-carb options.
Start your day with pancake-like patties made without flour or refined sugar: Fit Flap Jax. Each three inch-round FlapJax—in flavors such as blueberry, pear-apple, and sweet potato (trust me, it tastes better than it sounds)—is created with whole grains and fruits, and is low in calories, high in protein and rich in fiber and good carbs. Best of all, each pancake runs from seventeen to twenty calories each and costs only $3.50 for a pack of five. Hint: Try them with some guiltless fat-free or sugar-free maple syrups.
Tasti D-Lite—everyone’s favorite “it doesn’t really count” snack—serves more than one hundred delicious flavors of its creamy, delicious, all-natural, frozen dessert. Feel free to indulge in tastes from caramel fudge and crème brulee to red velvet cake and chocolate marshmallow daily, since a four-ounce serving (a size small) runs you only about forty-eight calories. The only bad news—its stores are located in limited locations: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, and Texas.
The age of the packaged, cardboard-like nutritional bar is over, thanks to the baked health food goods company Vitalicious. You can still fool your body into thinking it’s getting a rich, succulent dessert—replete with vitamins, minerals, and fiber and without the fat—by chewing on a VitaMuffin. Choose from fat-free flavors BlueBran, CranBran, MultiBran, AppleBerryBran (one hundred calories, zero grams of fat); lowfat Deep Chocolate (one hundred calories, 1.5 grams of fat) and low-carb/sugar-free flavors BananaNut, Velvety Chocolate, and VitaBrownie (one hundred calories, 2.5 grams of fat) and more. Freshly baked products will be delivered via UPS between two and four days after you place your order.
Whole Foods Market, located in most U.S. states, Canada, and the UK, carries the ultimate staple for the health-conscious: Tofu Shirataki Noodles. Created with tofu and yam flour, the pasta-like noodles are high in fiber and low in calories. One four-ounce serving has only twenty calories, a half gram of fat and three grams of carbs. One eight-ounce package costs $1.79. Add a little low-fat marinara and your imagination and you’ll think you’re in a little cafe in Abruzzo (kinda).
