Nature Valley Healthy Heart Granola Bars. Oatmeal Raisin, and Honey Nut. $2.89 per 7-ounce box containing five bars.
Bonnie: Nature Valley Healthy Heart Granola Bars contain plant sterols that are purported to help lower blood cholesterol levels. As I've mentioned in previous columns, research suggests plant sterols will help reduce blood levels of LDL-cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol) when consumed at a level of about a gram per day. The plant sterols work by slowing down absorption of cholesterol in the small intestine. But they work only if you consume them daily.
If you opt to do this, you can find these sterols in Minute Maid Heartwise orange juice, Benecol and Take Control margarines, Yoplait Healthy Heart yogurt, and Hain Rice Dream Heartwise nondairy beverages. You can also get plant sterols from dietary supplements.
But do you need to buy and eat any of these? Only you and your physician can make that determination.
If you decide yes, the lower-fat Oatmeal Raisin is best.
Carolyn: Bonnie just gave you a partial list of all the "heart-healthy" products now being offered by food manufacturers. Healthy Heart Granola Bars expand the concept to include snack bars. Like most of these products (including Healthy Heart Yoplait yogurt from parent company General Mills), Nature Valley Healthy Heart contains cholesterol-lowering plant sterols.
Unfortunately for portability, plant sterols go down a lot easier in yogurt, spreads and orange juice than they do in granola bars. The Healthy Heart Oatmeal Raisin Granola Bar, for instance, is dry and chewy to a punishing degree. The Honey Nut is a puffy cereal-style bar with granola bar ingredients; in other words, better than the other variety, but still no treat. And both bars have significantly more calories than regular granola bars. And how many times has Bonnie said that obesity is a significant factor in heart disease?
Speaking of obesity: Weight Watchers, Slim-Fast and Healthy Choice are just a few of the brand families that have been created to address that problem. My feelings about Nature Valley Healthy Heart notwithstanding, it's just a matter of time before there's a whole line of food for people with heart disease (and maybe for cancer and diabetes, too).
Libby's Juicy Juice. Watermelon, and Strawberry Banana. $2.29 per 46-ounce or $2.50 per 64-ounce bottle.
Bonnie: Wake up, American parents. Sugary sodas are not the only liquid enemies. Yes, Juicy Juice is 100 percent vitamin-fortified juice with no added sugar or artificial flavors and is thus better than Coke or Kool-Aid. But even 100 percent juice can contain too much sugar and too many empty calories. In fact, according to the American Association of Pediatrics, toddlers shouldn't drink more than 6 ounces of 100 percent fruit juice per day; adolescents and teenagers, no more than 12 ounces.
The large amount of juice that our kids are drinking has been linked to the rising incidence of childhood obesity. With this problem now considered epidemic, we need to review how we're feeding our kids. Consider diluting the juice with water or seltzer, or serving fresh fruit or milk instead. Remember: Everything in moderation.
The new Juicy Juice Watermelon variety tastes like Jolly Rancher Watermelon candy. In other words, very sweet. So another thing these juices could be doing is training our kids to crave sweeter treats.
Carolyn: Fruit juice offers more than just flavor. We also associate certain textures with particular fruit juices (if you weren't raised on Juicy Juice, that is) — pear, banana and even orange juice have a lot more heft than lemon, apple or grape. These Watermelon and Strawberry Banana Juicy Juices may taste like their namesakes, but like all Juicy Juices, have the texture of their cheap apple- and/or grape-juice base.
I like what Juicy Juice's food techs did to strengthen the naturally weak watermelon flavor — a juice that would be clear even without the addition of grape or apple. But as good as it may taste, clear Strawberry Banana juice is as wrong as sugarless candy.
El Monterey Breakfast Taquitos. Egg, Bacon & Cheese and Flour Tortillas. $6.99 per 30-ounce box containing 20 taquitos.
Bonnie: Cowboys and others near or south of the border have a habit of wrapping almost any food in a tortilla. That idea inspired these new El Monterey Breakfast Taquitos. These are filled, rolled and fried tortillas, Americanized for breakfast. These new taquitos are finger food, looking similar to the rolled Pepperidge Farm Pirouette cookies. All you do is heat and eat.
Each taquito contains 100 calories and 4 grams of fat, not nearly as much as I expected for a fried tortilla filled with eggs, cheese and bacon. That's because they're too tightly rolled to contain much filling. Moreover, while the folks at El Monterey define a serving as three taquitos, I found one or two to be filling enough.
Carolyn: Mexicans may put everything in tortillas, Bonnie, but Americans fry everything. The two cultures meet in these rolled and fried flour tortillas filled with eggs, bacon and cheese. They taste great, although mainly of cheese, rather than eggs or bacon. They look like cigars and, I figured, were probably almost as bad for you before I heard the good news from Bonnie.
Bonnie Tandy Leblang is a registered dietitian and professional speaker. Carolyn Wyman is a junk-food fanatic and author of "Better Than Homemade: Amazing Foods That Changed the Way We Eat" (Quirk). Each week they critique three new food items. © Universal Press Syndicate