Juice with half the calories. Photo by
Jerry Deutsch | THE NIBBLE.

Do you enjoy a glass of juice but not the high calorie and sugar content?

Tropicana has addressed those concerns with Trop50 juice beverages: 50% less sugar and calories. An eight-ounce glass has 50 calories.

We tried two flavors of Trop50: Pineapple Mango and Pomegranate Blueberry.

The juice beverages have a nice, delicate fruit flavor—yes, it’s more dilute flavor than “full test” juice, but a good fruit juice solution for those who have given up this high-calorie, high-sugar, high-carb food.

The products will be welcomed by dieters, carb counters and America’s 20-million-plus diabetics, who have had to give up juice; not to mention parents who are counting their kids’ carbs. While the sugars are still high (11g per eight-ounce glass), Trop50 gives people on sugar quota on the choice to have a glass of juice.

Trop 50 is simple, yet not simple:

You certainly can dilute your own juice with filtered water, but Tropicana’s process adds in natural flavors and PureVia (a brand of natural, calorie-free stevia)—plus vitamin C to ensure that one serving still contains 100% of your daily value of vitamin C.

Trop50 is certified kosher by OK.

One thing to note: It’s no longer a half gallon (64 ounces) but 59 ounces. Contemplation of the day: How much more can companies shrink gallons, pounds (16 ounces of coffee is now 14 ounces), etc.?

It can walk the walk on the grocery shelf, but
can it “taste the taste?” Have a mineral water
tasting party to find out. Photo courtesy
Antipodes.

Whether you’re looking for a zero-calorie way to get through the Academy Awards or a great way to entertain adults and kids in general, water is the way.

Have a mineral water tasting, comparing domestic and imported waters to your local tap water and club soda (with sparkling waters).

It can be a formal sit-down or a walk-around event, open or “blind”—where you mask the water bottles in wine bags so tasters aren’t biased and you reveal the results at the end.

Select up to 12 waters—perhaps six still and six sparkling—and a great time will be had by all. What should tasters look for? See our article, How To Evaluate Water.

A great, 200-calorie pizza fix. Photo by
Evan Dempsey | THE NIBBLE.

Love pizza but avoid it because of the calories? Love pizza but don’t have enough “takers” to order an entire pie? Love pizza and wish you could have it more often? Need something quick to feed the kids?

DiGiorno has a solution you’re sure to love:

New DiGiornio 200 Calorie Portions are individually-wrapped pizza slices that go from the freezer to the microwave when desire calls. Calorie (and carb) watchers know exactly what they’re getting…and everyone gets to eat truly delicious home-cooked pizza.

Unlike warmed-over microwave pizza, these DiGiorno slices emerge with a crisp crust, not to mention fragrant and delicious.

More than 12,000 products are introduced into supermarkets each year. Most don’t sell enough and disappear from the shelf (brown sugar Sweet ’n Low, to recall an oldie).

DiGiornio 200 Calorie Portions deserve to stick around forever! Pick some up on your next shopping trip. (If they’re not in your store’s pizza freezer, ask the store manager to order them.)

In Cheese and Tomato, Chicken with Peppers and Onions, and Pepperoni, the suggested retail price is $3.19. Each package contains two individually-wrapped, three-ounce servings.

This barbecue pork loin saves many calories
with a sugar-free blackberry sauce. Here’s
the recipe. Photo courtesy The J.M.
Smucker Company.

Want to throw a get-together but fear for your strict diet? Have a pot luck diet lunch or dinner.

Everyone brings his or her best low-calorie dish, along with copies of the recipe to share and, if it’s a buffet, an index card to set in front of the dish, with the name of the dish and the cook, the ingredients and, if possible, calories per saving.

For more party fun, everyone can rank their top three dishes, and winners can be named.

The prizes?

Something low-calorie, of course! Or something no-calorie, like fancy brands of mineral water.

It’s a great party idea: Less cooking for you and the opportunity to try lots of new low-calorie recipes with your friends—who will be very thankful for all the new recipes they’ll be taking home.

This party concept works with any dietary restriction—fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, low carb, vegan, etc.

Make Diet Jello-O a fun diet food with Jello-O
Jigglers molds. Photo courtesy Kraft Foods.

Our next-to-last diet tip for Healthy Food Month at THE NIBBLE:

If you’ve ever made Jell-O brand Jigglers for kids—Jell-O poured into egg-size molds that are particularly popular at Easter—those molds make colorful and tasty diet food when you fill them with Sugar-Free Jell-O, and are a treat any time of the year.

Choose your favorite flavors and make up a batch—we love cranberry, strawberry banana, orange, lemon and lime. You can serve the eggs whole or cut them with an egg slicer.

If you don’t have a mold, you can prepare the Egg Jiggler recipe in a 9″x13″ pan and then cut shapes with cookie cutters.

Serve Sugar-Free Jiggers with fruit, yogurt and cottage cheese, for light meals, snacks or dessert. Fun food takes the sameness out of dieting; and at just 10 calories a serving, Sugar-Free Jell-O is a caloric bargain.

Apricot and Raspberry, two of the six flavors
of Polaner’s Sugar-Free Preserves with Fiber.
Photo by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

Why add fiber to sugar-free preserves?

According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, most of us don’t get enough fiber in our diet. On average, American women get 12 grams per day; American men get 18.

Experts say we should get from 25 to 40 grams of fiber daily to help support a healthy digestive system, reduce the risk of heart disease and manage our weight (fiber is more filling). That’s why when you have a choice of eating foods with more fiber or less, you’re better off choosing more (most fruits and vegetables are high on the fiber list).

If you’re on a sugar-free or reduced-sugar diet, chances are that you’re already eating lots of good fruits and veggies. But now it’s sweeter to get an extra 3 grams of fiber (about 12% of your daily requirement), with every tablespoon of Polaner Sugar-Free Preserves with Fiber. They’re sweetened with Splenda.

We’ve been enjoying these jams—yes, they’re actually jam, not preserves (more about that in a minute)—since their debut, around the beginning of November 2009 (sorry we’re late in sharing the news).

Polaner recommends it on toast and muffins, of course; as an addition to smoothies or cookie dough, or whisked into oil and a bit of vinegar for a marinade.

The line is certified kosher. It’s just 10 calories per tablespoon, and for you carb counters:

- Sugar Free Apricot Preserves with Fiber: 4g carbs – 3g fiber = 1g net carb
- Sugar Free Blackberry with fiber: 5g carbs – 3g fiber = 2g net carbs
- Sugar Free Grape with Fiber: 4g carbs – 3g fiber = 1g net carb
- Sugar Free Orange Marmalade: 5 carbs – 3g fiber = 2g net carbs
- Sugar Free Raspberry with Fiber: 5g carbs – 3g fiber = 2g net carbs
- Sugar Free Strawberry with Fiber: 5g carbs – 3g fiber = 2g net carbs

COUPON: You can get a $1.00 coupon here. If you don’t have the Java aplet for printing coupons, start at the Polaner home page.

If you haven’t yet begun to make good on that New Year’s resolution to eat healthier and/or lose weight (and we’re guilty of that!), read our recommendations of 10 appliances that help you cook enjoyable, lower-calorie foods.

Take a look at how you can benefit from:

See them all and decide if they can help you with your eating goals.

This food steamer makes it easy to cook
three different types of healthy veggies
at once. Photo courtesy JCPenney.com.

One of the challenges of the food-writing profession is that, to do a really good job of it, you’ve got to taste everything straight off the spoon. Even hot sauce. Otherwise, the flavor of the bread, chicken or other food you’re using as a base gets in the way.

Tasting soy sauce from the spoon was a tough job. We were concerned that our Big Papi En Fuego hot sauce tasting would take out our taste buds for the rest of the day. But Big Papi is such a fine product, that even the XXX-Tra Hot version was enjoyable (very hot, but flavorful).

There’s a lot of small-batch hot sauce out there, made by hot sauce lovers who haven’t been satisfied with what they’ve found on the market. So they gather up the best ingredients starting with fresh chiles (many brands are made with chile extract—just a liquid without any texture or nuance).

One of those hot sauce lovers is the Boston Red Sox slugger David “Big Papi” Ortiz. Working with a product development company and the finest chiles, he’s developed a line of Louisiana-style hot sauce that is so flavorful, it’s a pleasure to eat from the spoon. Each is a different chile blend, and even the hottest of the four delivered great taste in addition to heat. We never go for hot salsa—we have a delicate palate. So consider how good these are.

So thick, fruity and luscious: Big Papi hits
this hot sauce out of the park. Photo by
Evan Dempsey | THE NIBBLE.

And, they’re calorie free! Made from vinegar, chiles and salt, this is a condiment you can sprinkle onto (and into) anything. Read the full review and heat things up a bit.

Your New Year’s resolution may be to eat healthier. But what do you do if you have a natural sweet tooth—or an addiction to chips?

Try Bare Fruit. The crispy and crunchy apple chips and chewy pears hit the spot. And every serving counts toward the “5 to 9 a day” of fruits and vegetable servings recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (In fact, dried fruit is the CDC’s fruit of the month for January.)

Even if your idea of a good time is not sinking your teeth into an apple or a pear, you may enjoy the fruit in its chip form. There are three options for apple chips: sweet Fuji apple chips, plain or with cinnamon, and tart Granny Smith apple chips. In addition to the pear slices, there are sweet but higher-calorie mango strips and dried cherries.

Bare Fruit products are gluten free and have no added sugar. Kids love ’em too. They’re certified USDA organic and kosher.

Sweet, low-calorie apple chips are as satisfying
as sugary snacks. Photo by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

Wasa crispbread, at 20 calories a slice, is
another way to cut bread calories. Photo by
Melody Lan | THE NIBBLE.

Want to cut calories but can’t give up the bread?

Both options give you all of the flavor and satisfaction of the bread with a big savings of calories and carbs.

See six additional ideas in our Diet Bread Tricks article.