Choosing Candy and Chocolate Bars
I'm going to give you some guidelines for picking the best (safest) candy and chocolate bars.
I think everyone is pretty much aware of the fact that this stuff is "junk food" and really isn't meant to be eaten on a regular basis. But, for those once-in-a-while treats, here are some things you may want to take into account to make your occasional junk food indulgence go as well as it can go:
- Avoid trans fat. Trans fat really is one of the worst (as in unhealthiest) possible things your food could contain, and a lot of the above items contained some amount of it. Looking over the comparison should make it fairly easy for you to weed out the trans fat candy and find a similar non-trans fat replacement. If there is just one candy/chocolate/junk food guideline you ever put into effect, let this be the one.
About 99% of the candy and chocolate bars compared have their trans fat content listed as "Trans fat: 0 grams." However, in some cases, this is actually a lie. Some of these items do indeed contain some amount trans fat even though the label says it doesn't. Let me explain...
By law, the FDA only requires food companies to list trans fat content if their food contains 0.5 grams or more of it in one serving. That means if the food contains exactly 0.49999 grams of trans fat per serving, they get to say their food contains 0 grams of trans fat. Yup, it's insanely stupid. But, that's how it is. That means if you eat a few servings of a food like this, you could end up eating a few grams of trans fat without even knowing it. And even if you just eat the 1 serving, ANY trans fat is still too much trans fat, no matter what the amount.
Luckily though, there is a way to detect if a food (in this case candy) contains any trans fat, even if the label says it doesn't. Just look at the ingredients. If you see the term "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated," that means there is indeed trans fat present in that food.
- Keep an eye on calories. If you have any weight related goals (such as, you know, losing some) then calories are your #1 concern. You may notice that 1 serving of all the "Hard and Powder Candy" contains hardly any calories when compared with 1 serving of any of the "Chocolate Bars." Think about that when the occasional craving for something sweet strikes you. You can satisfy that craving with a 280 calorie chocolate bar, or you can do it with a couple of 25 calorie rolls of Smarties.
- Saturated fat is pretty bad, too. Ever since trans fat became the new evil nutrition fact on your food label, I think saturated fat sometimes gets a little forgotten. It shouldn't be. While trans fat may outnumber it in terms of bad stuff it can potentially be the cause of, saturated fat has a pretty impressive list of its own. In the above comparison certain candy has as much as 10 more grams of saturated fat than some of the others. In other cases some candy has 3 or 4 grams, while other extremely similar candy has 0. This leaves plenty of room for an improvement in your choice of candy.
Source - Candy and Chocolate Bar Comparison