That's Fit

You skipped breakfast this morning and a dozen assorted Dunkin' Donuts await you at the office. A hunger-meter registering near-starvation is no time to make a nutritionally sound donut decision.

On a good willpower day you walk away and seek a healthier alternative. But on a bad day you grab a donut, bite into the soft, melting circle of sugar and gulp it down in three bites. Then you try and forget it happened or your sugar rush will be ruined. Here are a few common selections I often see in a Dunkin' Donuts dozen. If it is a bad day, at least be aware of the nutritionally 'better' choice for your weak moment. Which selection do you think has the least fat and calories?

If you answered French Cruller, you're right! At 150 calories and 8 g of fat, this sexy little number has 80 less calories than the next best selection in the poll, a Glazed Donut with 230 calories and 10 g fat. I always figured the Old-Fashioned Cake Donut was the best bet, but don't let this Plain Jane fool you. It has 280 calories and 15 g fat, more than every choice in the poll!

12 "healthy" foods that really aren't:

Why? Click to find out!

Occasionally grabbing breakfast on the run is one of those inevitabilities. After all, who hasn't overslept or woken up only to find that the last bit of cereal milk has been usurped by the last breakfaster? And grabbing breakfast on the go is better than not having any at all.

Yahoo health recently rated the top breakfast choices. Here are some picks:

• McDonald's: Fruit n' Yogurt Parfait -- 160 cal, 2 g fat
• Starbucks: Spinach, roasted tomato, feta and egg wrap -- 240 cal, 10 g of fat (but lots of protein and fiber)
• Jamba Juice: Jamba Light smoothie -- 150-160 cal, 0 g of fat
• Dunkin' Donuts: Four powdered donut holes -- 260 cal, 15 g of fat
• Burger King: Nothing. Their food still has trans fats.
  

Want to find out what other breakfast dishes made the cut? Click here for the full list.

In the spirit of recent fast food chains that have dumped trans fats for frying various products on the menu, that early-morning haunt for many doughnut fans has thrown its hat into the ring. Dunkin' Donuts has announced its plans to largely do away with using trans fats to fry its various pastry products.

The chain has announced that it developed an alternative cooking oil that is trans fat-free and will switch most of its products to using that oil soon (no specific timeframe was given).

The company made the bold statement that its menu would be laced with "zero grams trans fat" at its 5,400 U.S. locations. Is this another move to make customers healthier or cash in on the "trans fat" bandwagon for PR purposes. Both are fine in my opinion.

While I wouldn't recommend making a visit to one of these places a daily ritual, sometimes you just can't avoid grabbing a snack or lunch at places with less than perfect nutritional profiles. Fast food, coffee shops, and restaurants may not be able to offer you the best choices when it comes to a healthy meal, but you can train yourself to sniff out the lesser of two evils.

Try this quiz from Women's Health Magazine and see how you score when having to quickly to choose between two similar food choices. Some of the answers may surprise you. For instance, did you know that a strawberry Coolatta from Dunkin Donuts has an amazing 19 less grams of fat than a Raspberry Frozen Blend from Krispy Kreme, as well as 300 less calories? Or that a Quarter Pounder has nearly half that fat of a Whopper, though both are 4 ounce burgers? Of course, they didn't pit either burger up against a nice side salad, but that wouldn't have been any fun now, would it?

Again, I'm not recommending you eat these foods, but it was an interesting way for me to learn more about the fast food choices I encounter when I'm on the run. If you're truly interested in sticking to your diet while you're on the go, here are 15 tips to help you stay on course.