Surprise, surprise, we’re on a diet and we know we’re in good company because everyone at one point or another has been on a diet, on a diet now or have failed at least three times with whatever diet they were trying. Why? Because dieting is tough when there’s a giant glazed donut eyeballing you in the break room, begging to be eaten or when you know there’s a large order of fries with your name on it waiting for you at McDonalds.   Nutritionists and doctors expect these types of cravings from dieters who, prior to the diet, probably sipped a Slurpee through a twizzler and thought they were getting their daily intake of ‘fruit.’  They’ve responded to this with endless healthy alternatives that will supposedly satisfy your craving for whatever bad food you want to asphyxiate yourself with and still stay on the healthy track.  Although they mean well, some of these ‘alternatives’ are so far off the mark you have to wonder if these people even REMEMBER how delicious awful food tastes.

Here are 6 healthy snack alternatives that are laughable …

1. Cookies – Alternative: Celery with peanut butter?!?!

Just like a cookie, only grassier, and cold and not sweet. Yum?

So they’re telling us that if we’re craving something that’s cakey, soft, sweet and rich, this craving will be eradicated if we eat a  cold vegetable with peanut paste on it!?!  Eating toothpaste right out of the tube is a closer alternative to a cookie than a celery stick. The almost non-existent sweet from peanut butter is not enough to satisfy a cookie craving.  Why don’t they just fess up and admit that this is a snack that is supposed to be filling and will hopefully decrease your hunger pangs as well as your cravings, because THAT make sense.  But to package this bland snack as some kind of replacement for a cookie is downright blasphemous.

A Better Alternative: Graham crackers, ginger snaps, 100 cal. cookie packs, low or reduced fat cookies.

2. Chips – Alternative: Unsalted Rice Cakes?!!?!

Yeah. Pretty much.

Chips are greasy, salty, crunchy, potato-y and divine. Unsalted rice cakes can double as cup coasters or Styrofoam filling for your fragile packages.  If we saw someone actually eating an unsalted rice cake with nothing less than disgust and misery on their face, we would take their temperature and tell them to lie down so their taste buds can recover.  The only criteria the rice cake has that even comes close to resembling a chip is the crunchiness factor, which, if all you’re craving is ‘crunchy’ you might as well eat your coasters and skip the rice cakes altogether.

3. Chips – Alternative: Carrots

Salt & Vinegar chips?  Don’t fret, this is TOTALLY the same.

Yet another vegetable that’s supposedly an alternative to chips. Again, the only thing this satisfies is the crunchiness. Dear doctor nutritionist health people, go eat a fucking potato chip and tell us how much it tastes like a shitty carrot.  Yeah, it doesn’t.  Not even close.  AGAIN, it takes more than a ‘crunch’ to satisfy a chip craving, said the girl who can eat an entire bag of salt and vinegar potato chips by herself THEN turn the bag inside out and lick the greasy insides.  In short, don’t come at chip people with a bowl of carrots unless you really want to incite a mini-riot slash breakdown.

A Better Alternative: Kale Chips. You satisfy your chip craving AND get all the wonderful health benefits of eating Kale, (here’s the recipe) sweet potato chips,  soy chips (comes in lots of flavors!)

4. Chocolate -Alternative:  Banana?!

Dog shit

Okay we have to admit, so far this comes closer than those other three as an alternative, because a banana is somewhat creamy like a chocolate and sweet.  But it’s still very far from being a replacement to chocolate.   An ongoing theme with these ‘alternatives’ seem to be that they only cover ONE aspect of the food they’re supposedly replacing and usually it’s the texture.  Well if we’re going off that, you know what else is creamy and looks like chocolate: dog shit.  Which is basically what they’re shoving in our face with that silly banana suggestion to chocolate.

A Better Alternative: take that stupid banana and dip it in some dark chocolate, or just skip the banana and have some dark chocolate, sugar free chocolate pudding, Skinny Cow also has a lot of chocolate treats that are under 100 calories.

5. .Soda  - Alternative: Water?!

Half empty, half full, 100 percent NOT SODA

OH THANKS! Why didn’t I think of that?!? Because what’s a better replacement to a fizzy sweet drink than a non-fizzy tasteless drink am I right?!?! Yeah. They’re not even TRYING with this one because this is probably the one item that you can find LOTS of healthy alternatives for before water even comes to mind.  Don’t get us wrong, water is great for you and you can drink as much as you want with no worries about calories or sugars finding their way to your ass but this is definitely not something you go to in order to satisfy your craving for soda.

A Better Alternative: Fruit flavored waters, or better yet fruit flavored FIZZY water, they’re cheap, they have zero calories, zero sugars and you fulfill your daily intake of water in a very enjoyable way.

6. Ice Cream – Applesauce ?!

Rocky Road ice cream? I’ll pass. I gots me a bowl of unsweetened applesauce thankyouverymuch!

And no of course no just regular applesauce, that has way too much sugar, they suggest you get the unsweetened kind of applesauce.  I guess this would be a good diet alternative if what you’re craving for is the stuff that you see come out of a baby’s diaper AFTER they eat applesauce.   Okay so that’s a little harsh, but we’re stupefied that unsweetened applesauce would even come to mind when you’re thinking of alternatives for ice cream.  It’s barely creamy, it’s tangy instead of sweet and … no, just no. We’re done explaining. We don’t want to see unsweetened applesauce unless it’s part of the ingredients to an awesome dessert.

A Better Alternative: Again, Skinny Cow comes to the rescue with their endless variety of low fat, low cal ice creams and bars, or you can have some low fat, frozen yogurt

Written by Elaine Chaney who has since broken off all ties with salt & vinegar chips… but will occasionally drunk text it to let it know how much she misses it’s salty, spoiled smelling goodness.