Nobody has ever gotten thin on a diet of Oreos and Pecan Sandies, but Nabisco and Keebler would like you to try. These days, at the height of America’s traditional diet season, cookie and cracker aisles in supermarkets from coast to coast are crammed with boxes of Oreo Crisps, Just Right Pecan Sandies and a host of other munchies portioned into 100-calorie snack bags. “Eating smarter but looking for great-tasting snacks? You’ll love what your friends at Nabisco have created for you,” reads the back of Nabisco’s 100 Calorie Packs of Chips Ahoy, Wheat Thins, Oreo Thin Crisps and other indulgences that in the past were considered junk food. At least a dozen popular brands of cookies and crackers have been given the 100-calorie extreme makeover, not counting Pop Secret and Jiffy Pop, which just introduced 100-calorie bags of microwave popcorn, and Pringles, which has launched 100-calorie packs of chips. The catch is that most of the cookies and crackers are not the snacks you know and love. The Oreo, for example, has been reformulated to resemble a cracker. How does it taste? Is it really a diet food? To find out, we asked a panel of Akron Beacon Journal readers to rate the 100-calorie snacks in a blind taste test. Their verdict: Some of the snacks are pretty good, although all three tasters said they’d rather have an apple or a bunch of grapes. That’s good news to two local dietitians, who applauded the portion control but said the snacks are mostly empty calories. “I would want a whole lot more nutrition for 100 calories,” said dietitian Donna Skoda, Summit County, Ohio, Health Department’s director of community health. Also, the snacks are expensive, said Audrey Tucker, dietitian at the Summa Bariatric Care Center. A box of six packets of Honey Maid Cinnamon Thin Crisps cost $2.79 in one store. Each little packet, Tucker noted, weighed less than an ounce and contained just “15 to 20 little crackers about the size of a Wheat Thin.” Consumers don’t seem to mind, because the products are flying off store shelves. “Right now they’re a hot item in our stores,” said Sue Guthier, spokeswoman for Acme Fresh Markets. Sales of Kraft’s Nabisco line alone reached $10 million within five months of its introduction in July 2004, according to Mintel International, a market research firm. Kellogg’s line of Keebler Right Bites was rolled out the following June. “Sales have been good and consumers are definitely interested in having more flavors,” Keebler spokeswoman Colleen Cooney said. Snack manufacturers are counting on the 100-calorie packs to rescue the $4.6 billion cookie industry, which has been hurting because of Americans’ preoccupation with health. The rise of Type 2 diabetes, the national focus on obesity and the popularity of low-carbohydrate diets all caused cookie sales to drop 3.8 percent in 2004, the latest year for which figures are available, according to a Mintel report. But can an Oreo minus the creamy filling, squished cracker-thin and almost stripped of fat, woo back health-conscious snackers? Apparently so. Tasters loved the Oreo Thin Crisps, which placed fourth in the taste test behind an apple, fresh grapes and yogurt. Cynthia Young, 51, a middle school teacher, liked the crunchy texture of the Oreo Thin Crisps. Young attends Weight Watcher meetings and snacks on an apple every morning on the way to work. But after work, she wants a more satisfying snack, she said. “In the evening I want something that makes me feel I’m getting more of a snack,” she said. Of the 19 snacks tasted – 11 commercially packaged 100-calorie snacks, 6 healthful snacks recommended by the dietitians, and regular miniature Oreos and miniature Nutter Butter Bites – five of the new products made it into the top 10. After the Oreo Thin Crisps came Cheese Nips Thin Crisps in fifth place; Ritz Snack Mix, sixth; Right Bites Cheez-It, seventh; and Right Bites Mini Fudge Stripes, 10th. A plain apple placed first followed by fresh grapes and low-fat yogurt. Regular mini Oreos placed eighth and regular Nutter Butter cookies, ninth. For the blind tasting, the products were removed from their packages and served on paper plates. They were identified only with random three-digit numbers. All of the products, including the fruit, were served in 100-calorie portions. Tasters rated the snacks on flavor, texture, quantity and overall acceptability, assigning from 1 to 25 points in each category for a possible perfect total score of 100. The scores of the three judges were then averaged. The apple raked in 98.3 points, and the grapes 94.6. The Oreo Thin Crisps, in comparison, earned just 79.6 points – not great, but a lot better than the measly 35.6 points given Right Bites Chips Deluxe. The judges didn’t think much of Keebler’s Right Bites Sandies Shortbread Cookies, either, which got just 44 points. “There were some that were tasty but some that were cardboard,” Fulmer said. Some of the dietitians’ suggested snacks didn’t fare any better. A 100-calorie cup of Jell-O Chocolate Fat Free Pudding Snack came in dead last, Quaker’s new Multigrain Cakes rice cakes were 17th, and a single-serve tub of 2 percent cottage cheese tied with the Sandies. Too bad, because those who are limiting their calories, in particular, should choose more nutritious items than the 100-calorie cookies and crackers as snacks. “All those are, are a little bit of fat, a little bit of sodium and a little bit of fiber. That’s all you get in them. You don’t get any of your vitamins or minerals,” Skoda said. Both Skoda and Tucker worry that ravenous dieters will rip through the whole six-packet box in one setting, because the amount in each packet is skimpy. “If you can control your portions and eat just one, you’re OK,” Tucker said. “I think the problem with them is stopping at one. I can see somebody eating all six packages in that box.” Skoda agreed. “I gotta tell you, I was laughing,” she said. “When you open up these little packets and pour them out on a napkin you think, ‘My God, the packaging cost more than the contents.'” But the snacks are popular, and Americans are eating a lot of them. And that, said the dietitians, may be the problem.