The good, the bad and the best of '09

Clean labels. Whole grains. Gluten-free. Antioxidants. Omega-3s. Those seven words sum up new food-product introductions of 2009.

But trends are one thing and great eating is often another, as you will see in the following rundown of the best and worst new food products we tried this year.

We'll get the bad news out of the way first, with our joint Double Forks Down list, followed by our individual best-of-the-year picks (in no particular order), plus the one product we agreed was both tasty and good for you. It earns our 20th annual Golden Shopping Cart of the Year Award.

DOUBLE FORKS DOWN

1. M&M's Premiums Chocolate Candies. This attempt to upscale M&M's with shimmery colors and multilayered chocolate is doomed by a thin candy coating that lacks the original's crucial crunch.

2. Romano's Macaroni Grill Restaurant Favorites Dinner Kits. Bonnie thought these boxed meals too expensive for their pasta, sauce and seasonings content. Carolyn said they were too indulgent and too full of intensely flavored ingredients.

3. Quaker High Fiber Instant Oatmeal. Quaker added even more fiber to the already fibrous regular oatmeal, and then tried to make it tastier by upping the sweetness, mainly artificially (thus dooming it for Bonnie), to a point that it was even too sweet for Carolyn.

4. Cheetos Giant. These clementine-sized, barrel-shaped Cheetos are more stunt than snack (as well as a sign that some Frito-Lay marketers need to grow up!).

5. Trop 50 Orange Juice Beverages. Tropicana's already dubious half-calorie, half-juice, full-priced orange drink line made worse-tasting with the addition of the newly approved stevia sweetener.

6. Duncan Hines 100 Percent Whole Grain Muffins. The addition of whole grains hurts Duncan Hines' usual great taste without even pleasing Bonnie — who'd prefer you get your breakfast whole grains from a regular (low-fat and low-calorie) bowl of oatmeal.

7. Ben & Jerry's Flipped Out! We're flipped out over the idea that Ben & Jerry's could make our worst-of list, but these upside-down sundaes richly deserve it because of brownies and toppings that aren't Ben & Jerry's trademark rich.

8. SunnyD Smoothies Juice and Dairy Beverages. Bonnie complained that these lack all the milk and juice nutrients in real smoothies; Carolyn, that it looks and tastes like kids' liquid antibiotics.

BONNIE'S FAVORITES