Health: Food News.

Fat Coffee

A coffee habit can be a fattening habit. Elizabeth Metallinos-Katsaras, a nutritionist at Simmons College in Boston, studied overall calorie intake among people who drank specialty coffees, such as lattes or cappuccinos, regularly. Compared with nondrinkers, those who consumed gourmet coffee an average of seven times a week took in an extra 206 calories and eight teaspoons of sugar daily -- enough, in the absence of compensating diet or exercise, to cause a pound of weight gain in 17 days. A 10- to 16-ounce coffee or espresso with added fats or sweeteners can contain 180 to 500 calories and 1.5 to 17 grams of fat -- and the larger sizes may have twice that much. Metallinos-Katsaras recommends ordering a small size with nonfat milk, less or no syrup, and no whipped cream or sugar.

More Filling

Meal-replacement bars may control dieters' hunger better than diet shakes. Over six weeks, 108 people replaced one or two meals per day with a bar that contained 250 calories, 4 grams of dietary fiber, 14 grams of protein, and 8 grams of fat. They reported feeling full for five hours afterward. In a previous study, diet-shake drinkers felt hungry three hours later. Because the study did not compare bars and shakes directly or with real meals, it's not conclusive, notes Richard D. Mattes, a ...