Highs and lows of '05 products

Whether you diet, frequently eat in the car or are concerned about eating for whole health (although you've also been known to splurge on a decadent dessert), the new food products of 2005 were made for your cupboard and refrigerator — and dashboard. They include ice cream balls and cookie chips in car-cupholder containers, vitamin- and mineral-fortified diet drinks and cereal lines, and chocolate-dipped cookies from candymakers Hershey's and Dove.

But trends are one thing, and good eating is often another, as you will see in the following rundown of the highs and lows of this past year's worth of eating and evaluating. We present a list of products we'd both just as soon forget (dubbed Double Forks Down), our individual best-of-the-year lists and, finally, the winner of our joint annual Golden Shopping Cart award for best new food product of the year.

Double Forks Down

1. Oscar Mayer Deli Fresh Shaved Roast Beef. Roast beef preserved with so much salt that it tastes like ham.

2. Red Baron Gold Edition Thin Crust Pizza. The crust is crispy all right, but it's utterly tasteless and not all that thin. Bonnie says these also contain way too much fat and sodium.

3. Gorton's Grilled Fillet Meals. Blocks of white industrial pollack accompanied by white rice and white-sauce-covered veggies. Unfortunately these dinners tasted as good as they looked.

4. Oh Boy! Oberto Beef Jerky Crisps. A beef snack chip, if you can get your mind around that. Accepting the idea was certainly easier than getting these red and chewy things down our gullets. "Oh boy" (exclamation point deliberately omitted) is right.

5. Jolly Time Healthy Pop Caramel Apple Microwave Popcorn. Good-for-you popcorn desecrated by artificial flavors, colors and sweeteners, says Bonnie. Carolyn hated only the smell it gave her microwave (for days).

6. Yoplait Go-Gurt Smoothie. It's never good when a food product resembles a medicine (in this case, Pepto-Bismol).

Bonnie's favorites

1. Sunkist Fun Fruits. Precut grapes, apples, oranges and pineapple conveniently and attractively packaged to appeal to kids. Unfortunately for us Supermarket Samplers, right now they're mainly in schools. But what a perfect place to start offering healthy snacks.

2. Haagen-Dazs Light Mint Chip Ice Cream. A light ice cream that tastes like an indulgence.