Is there a way to make my favorite junk foods healthier?

You can definitely make junk food healthier by using the following substitutions:

• Baked Chips for regular chips
• Hummus, chunky salsa and Wholly Guacamole instead of mayo dips
• Whole wheat crackers instead of regular crackers
• Light or 2% cheese instead of regular cheese
• Make your own peanut butter crackers instead of buying prepackaged
• Dark chocolate instead milk chocolate
• Homemade bagel pizzas instead of frozen (use part-skim mozzarella)
• Baked tortilla chips plus low-fat shredded Mexican cheese for nachos with cheese sauce (you could also add ground turkey)

Forget swearing off junk foods, you'll eventually cave anyway, and risk binging. When your taste buds are demanding a guilty treat, there are ways to occasionally indulge those cravings without busting your good eating intentions or tipping your scales. Here's how.

• Perfect Pizza Ask for a thin, whole-wheat crust -- the thinner, the fewer the fat grams and calories, plus whole wheat ups the fiber and protein. Then ask for half the cheese (cuts saturated fat) and extra chicken and heart-friendly veggies, like artichokes, onions, and red or green peppers. Just before eating, blot any pools of extra grease with napkins to knock off another 3-5 grams of saturated fat.

• Fine Fries Make a batch of oven fries, and snarf up your share. At 103 calories and 1 gram of fat, you can. In fact, eat 'em all if you're in the mood. You just can't do real damage with these. And they're good.

• Better Burgers This may sound strange, but mixing unsweetened chopped tart cherries (fresh, frozen, or canned) into ground beef is a tasty way to reduce the amount of meat, fat, and calories in each burger. Also, if you're cooking on a grill, adding cherries means fewer carcinogens will form during grilling. After the burgers are done, eliminate more fat by blotting them with paper towels. The cherries help keep them juicy.

• Brilliant Burritos You're already on the right track with burritos, since they're wrapped in soft tortillas, not fried taco-style. Use whole-wheat tortillas, which are getting easy to find. For the filling, choose chicken, black beans, or seafood, not fat-laden beef, pork, or refried beans. Top with salsa (naturally low-cal and no-fat) and a little guacamole -- its heart-healthy good fats also unlock extra antioxidants in the salsa's tomatoes. The only thing you should skip: sour cream.

• Go-for-it Banana Split Use a low-fat vanilla ice cream, like many of the slow-churned ice creams. Top with sliced bananas, fat-free chocolate, and walnuts or slivered almonds. Yum. And the nutrients in the banana and the good fats in the nuts take the guilty edge off.

• Fizzy Drinks If you loathe sugar substitutes (and thus diet sodas) but hate the calories and high fructose corn syrup of regular soda even more, make your own vitamin C-rich fizzy fruit concoctions. Start with one or two favorite juices (like cranberry and orange, or pomegranate and pineapple). Halve their calories by fizzing them up with an equal amount of club soda. Add a wedge of lime or lemon if one's handy.  

Take the RealAge Test!