Lean beef?

Ground beef offers perhaps the worst example of inaccurate labeling. Get your calculator out to decipher this madness.

Did you know that a 4-ounce serving of 90 percent lean ground beef has about 214 calories and 11 grams of fat, and that 50 percent of the calories come from fat?

If that's the case with so-called "lean" beef, just imagine what you might find in meat simply labeled "hamburger."

Low-fat milk

Do you hate skim milk and drink 2 percent milk instead?

You may be surprised to learn that 2 percent milk is not 98 percent fat-free. It's not even a low-fat product. Two percent milk is about 40 percent fat.

A one-cup serving has 120 calories, 5 grams of fat and a hefty 12 grams of sugar. To be considered low-fat, a product should have less than 3 grams of fat per serving.

Cereal hype, or hope?

According to the experts, fiber helps lower blood cholesterol, stabilize blood sugar levels and prevent constipation, among other wonderful things. Unfortunately, the typical American diet is lacking significantly in fiber.

With that in mind, many cereal manufacturers have jumped on the high-fiber bandwagon, claiming their products can lower cholesterol and reduce your risk for heart disease.

However, upon closer investigation you'll find that many of these products contain less than the recommended minimum of 3 grams of soluble fiber per serving.

Don't be fooled by those healthy sounding "whole grain" breakfast bars, either. Most are candy bars in disguise. Many popular brands have a scant amount of oats (less than 1 gram of fiber per bar), with 26 grams of carbohydrates and a whopping 13 grams of - you guessed it - sugar.

In fact, read the ingredients list and you'll see that sugar - high fructose corn syrup - is the first ingredient listed. The whole grains this product claims to have are, hmmm, about No. 30 on the list.

When it comes to breakfast, the best bang for your nutritional buck is oat bran cereal, old-fashioned rolled oats, or Post 100% Bran Cereal. Add some fresh fruit and you'll have a powerhouse high-fiber, high-antioxidant breakfast!

Size matters

If you eat a big bowl of cereal, you are likely eating four to five servings at one sitting. That means you're consuming four to five times the calories, sugar, fat, and salt listed for a single serving, which is typically a half-cup to a cup.

Hot cereals yield a one-cup serving per half-cup of raw grain. Of course, there's no added salt, sugar or other artificial ingredients, either.

Label sleuthing

Here are some basic rules from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for defining healthy and unhealthy foods by their labels:

• Fiber: Look for foods with 3 or more grams of fiber per serving.

• Low sodium: Foods have less than 140 grams of sodium per serving.

• Very low sodium: 35 mg or less per serving.

• Low calorie: 40 calories per serving.

• Low cholesterol: 20 mg or less, and 2 grams or less of saturated fat per serving.

• Low fat: Less than 3 grams of fat per serving.

• Reduced fat: Contains 50 percent (or less) of the fat found in the original product.

• Low saturated fat: 1 gram or less per serving.

• Fat-free: Less than a half-gram of fat per serving.

• Reduced calorie: At least a third fewer calories than the original product.

• Light/lite: A meaningless term - could refer to the product color, not the calories.

• "No sugar added": Means no table sugar was added, but the product may contain other forms of sugar such as corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, maltose or sucrose.

• Sugar-free: Less than 0.5 grams of sugar.

• Low-sugar diet: Less than 5 grams of carbs per serving