Scale It Down

It is our goal in life to stretch every calorie
buck we spend to the limit!

Ritz Chips If you haven't tried this version of the famed cracker, drop everything now and go buy a bag! They are an excellent, light, crunchy and dip worthy addition to a low cal snack food arsenal. (And, they are also equally satisfying straight from the bag.) One serving yields about 14 chips for a total of 140 calories and they come in Regular, Cheddar and Sour Cream & Onion flavors. They make a good sized nosh too, because the chips are bigger than a saltine.

Quakes Corn Rings by Quaker A client of mine first recommended these to me. She said they were by the rice cakes. I kind of dismissed her suggestion at the time because I thought they had to be cheddar flavored rice cakes, which I have never been a big fan of. Not so! I finally took a peek at them and they were anything but. I would definitely categorize them as a cheese puff (i.e. Cheeto), and just as crunchy. The rings are a good sized bite and you get 25 of them for 130 calories. Great deal! I also picked up a bag of Quaker's caramel corn rice snacks, (120 calories for 14 pieces), an all time favorite of mine. The funny thing is I had never noticed before that the smaller round size variety were also marketed as "Quakes".

Snyder's Butter Snaps Pretzels Sometimes just trying the same product in a different form changes your mind about it. I have never liked butter flavored pretzels (rods and twists), so I was amazed when I found that Snyder's square shaped variety of the same to be very good. Each 1" square is a good for a decent bite, and a serving is 24 pieces for a total of 120 calories. They make fabulous dippers too!

Land O Lakes Whipped Light Butter This find actually came from one our weight control clients, and it has proved to be fantastic thus far! (Thank you, C.W.!) The whipped light butter is only 35 calories per Tablespoon, for a total of 3.5 grams of fat. Until this find came along, we were convinced that anything below 5 f.g./T ( for a total of 50 calories ) was not worth using for lack of taste and fat consistency. But, this product not only tastes like butter, it melts like it too - a big plus for cooking!

Quaker Oats Crisp'ums We are in love with these things! Sweet crackers - not graham crackers, but crackers just like the Wheat Thin kind, only sweet. Excellent concept! They come in blueberry, cinnamon sugar, apple and a couple of other flavors; packaged in separate pouches at a 150 calories per pouch. They make great dippers for cottage cheese, yogurt, etc. Portable and delectable!

Skippy Squeeze Stix Once in a blue moon, you run across little packages of peanut butter, stuck between those small size jams you get at restaurants. We always thought portable PB was a good idea, but it was hard to find in the stores - until now. Skippy has come out with "portable tubes" of peanut butter and chocolate flavored peanut butter. One .9 oz. tube is 140 calories (both flavors) and it's about 1 ½ T worth of the real stuff. The tube makes a great food tool to use for hectic schedules, at work and while on the go. Add a medium apple to it and you've got a good snack/mini-meal for 200 calories. And, you get to squeeeeze it out to serve it!

Betty Crocker Decorating Spray Well, if this wasn't a wild product that came out late last year…colored frosting in an aerosol can you can use to tint and decorate your baked goods. The only thing they didn't think of was putting the calorie content on the can. We called to inquire and this is the answer we got from Wilma, at Signature Brands, who spoke to Dr. Grosskopf on our behalf: "…there are NO calories in the decorating spray." So there you have it, just enough spritz to give your cookies some color without adding additional calories to the mix. Thanks, Wilma.

Yoplait Yogurt Whips DON'T STOP READING…even if you detest yogurt, we dare you try this product and not like it! First, because it doesn't taste like yogurt and second, because it makes a great breakfast, lunch, snack and/or dessert at 140 calories. It's like eating Cool Whip - we swear!

Sargento Cheese Snacks Great news on the I-love-cheese front. Sargento now offers individually wrapped cheese sticks in the flavors of: Colby-Jack at 80 calories per stick and a Light version of String Cheese at 50 calories per stick.

French Twists by Barry's Bakery. The greatest thing about these sweet puffed pastries is they're non-dairy, butter-less, have no cholesterol, no eggs, no yeast and are low in sodium. They taste like crunchy light versions of bakery sweet rolls. The man who developed them (Barry, or course) did so after having a major heart attack at the age of 42. His love for sweets drove him to developing this product. The pastries are available in almost all of the U.S. 50 states, and can be found in your grocery store's fresh baked goods section. For more info go to: www.buybarrys.com or call 1-800-TWIST-US. 2/1/03 UPDATE> For those of you who've been having trouble with logging onto Barry's website and getting through on the 800#, we found out that they have been having troubles with their site and that the 800# is only good when dialed from the U.S. 5/1/03 UPDATE> We got an email from Barry's and their new website is up: www.buybarrys.us OR www.buybarrys.net . (We tried it right away and got on!)

Buddig Premium Lean Slices - deli style A 2.5 oz. package (about 8 slices total) ranges between 70-90 calories by meat. When you have a whole package of anything your brain thinks you're really getting away with something.

Kaukauna Lite Sharp Cheddar This cold packed cheese is 70 calories / 2 T. Excellent on crackers and sandwiches!

Louis Rich Cheese Franks They taste great and are only 90 calories per frank. That is pretty amazing since Oscar Meyer's cheese franks are 150 calories per link - and we don't know exactly what's inside those dogs either.

Waffuls by Eggo They come in blueberry, apple cinnamon and maple flavors - a lot of flavor. They taste like they're packed with butter and syrup in the middle. The best thing is you can even eat them by hand. The down side is they're 150 calories per piece - but having just one of them was enough. Even if you want 2, it's not outrageous.

Needless to say, we will constantly be updating this list with every new lower cal goodie we can find.