Few foods are as delicious as they are guilt-free. Below are six hidden treasures we discovered on the shelves of our local supermarket. These low-cal treats have become grocery-list must-haves, whether we're dieting or not.
For a FULL grocery list of Hungry Girl friendly items, click here!
1. The Laughing Cow Light Cheese Wedges
If you haven't yet discovered the wonders of these 35-calorie, 2g-of-fat soft cheese wedges, you need to wheel your cart into the dairy section immediately. In Original Swiss, Garlic & Herb, and French Onion, this cheese is perfect in recipes, as a flavored cream cheese swap or sandwich spread, for making sauces, and more. It's the only decadent soft cheese out there that's portion-controlled, not loaded with fat and calories, and DELICIOUS. Plus, a giddy cow is involved, and who doesn't love that?!
2. Salad Dressing Sprays
Thick, gloppy dressing gushing from a container is so 2005! Even so-called light dressings can add too many extra calories and fat grams to a perfectly guilt-free salad. But with THREE lines of spritzable low-calorie dressings around, there really is a salad spray for everyone. Wish-Bone Salad Spritzers and Ken's Lite Accents both offer huge flavor selections, from their ginger-y Asian ones to Ken's Honey Mustard Vinaigrette. And Newman's Own All Natural Salad Mist is perfect for those opposed to artificial ingredients. A 10-serving spray of any of these has just 10 - 15 calories, and they all taste fantastic (really!).
3. Fiber One Bran Cereal (Original)
Wake up, people. This is so not your grandma's bran cereal. It's crunchy with a perfect texture, slightly sweet, and totally delicious. It has just 60 calories and 1g of fat per fiber-packed half-cup serving. But best of all, this cereal is a serious multitasker. Not only is it great in your breakfast bowl, but it's also an AWESOME ingredient for pie crusts, dessert toppings, parfaits, snack mixes, and more. And it's the KEY ingredient in all of HG's "faux fry" recipes. If it were legal (and not weird) to marry a cereal, we'd be ring shopping.
4. Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze
Speaking of cereal, you'll need the perfect no-guilt milk product to pour over it. Skim milk is boring, and not everyone enjoys soymilk. But Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze is rich, creamy, vanilla-licious, and insanely low in calories -- an entire cup has just 40 of 'em! BTW, it's also all-natural and dairy-free. One sip and you may just swear off regular old milk for good. Look for UVAB on supermarket shelves with the other non-refrigerated boxed milks.
5. Canned Pure Pumpkin
Canned pumpkin may not seem all that thrilling, but it happens to be one of the most exciting foods ever to be confined to a can. Use it to make HG's 133-calories-per-slice pumpkin pie, mix a serving of it with a sugar-free vanilla pudding snack for a TOO-EASY tasty 100-calorie dessert, and make freakishly good, guilt-free brownie muffins with it! It's also AMAZING stirred into your morning oatmeal. We love pumpkin so much it hurts!
6. Freeze-Dried Fruit
Okay, regular dried fruit is pretty lame when you think about it. It's basically shriveled, sugary stuff that has way more calories (ounce for ounce) than regular fruit. And while freeze-dried fruit was once only for babies and astronauts, it's hittin' the mainstream. We couldn't be happier! Freeze-dried fruit is light, sweet, and airy, and you can eat a huge serving of it without wasting a whole lotta calories. It's good as a straight-up snack, on top of cereal, mixed into yogurt, for making low-cal trail mixes, and more. Look for lines like Sensible Foods Crunch Dried Snacks, Cereal Toppers, Gerber Mini Fruits (so what if it's meant for toddlers, it tastes awesome and is easy to find!), Just Tomatoes, and Crispy Green Crispy Fruit. A half-cup of the stuff typically has only 60 - 70 calories and less than a gram of fat.
For more guilt-free food finds, plus recipes, tips, tricks and more, check out hungry-girl.com and sign up for free daily emails!
And check out the first-ever HG book, Hungry Girl: Recipes and Survival Strategies for Guilt-Free Eating in the Real World, by clicking here! It's packed with 165 recipes and so much more!!!
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