The Biggest Health Food Scams of 2011 #3

7. Pasta Made with Veggies

Kraft is the latest food giant to promote hiding veggies in packaged foods. Walmart and Target started stocking Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinner Veggie Pasta in June and the Barilla Piccolini Veggie line hit shelves just a few weeks later. Both tout a whole serving of vegetables in each helping of pasta. But can you really get the same benefits of vegetables from neon orange mac and cheese? Take a guess.

"Vegetables that are freeze dried, powdered, and mixed into processed foods don't pack the same nutritional punch as whole vegetables," says Davis. Plus you are losing one of the top benefits of whole vegetables for people trying to fill up the bellies with fewer calories: volume.

8. Sea Salt

Wendy's released a sea slat version of its french fries at the end of 2010 - just a glimpse of what was to come in 2011. Almost every major brand of potato chip offers a sea salt flavor, and other big brands like Planters and Campbell's also has jumped on the bandwagon. Unfortunately, salt is salt. "By weight, both sea salt and regular table salt contain the same amount of sodium, which is what poses a health risk," says Davis. Another thing you may not realize: it doesn't matter what form those little whit crystals take, or what it says on the package label. All salt comes from the sea.

9."All-Natural Snacks"

The FDA hasn't officially defined "natural" yet, but it was one of the hottest buzzwords of 2011. Sales of all-natural products grew about 14% over the past 2 years, compared with 4% for the whole savory snack category. On cue, Frito-Lay announced in March that it will ditch monosodium glutamate (MSG) and other artificial ingredients in more than 60 snack varieties (including Lay's potato chips, Tostitos tortilla chips, multigrain SunChips and Rold Gold pretzels) by the end of 2011. But even without chemical additives, these snacks are still fat, salt and sugar bombs that should be eaten in very small quantities.

In related news: Doritos and Cheetos will remain unabashedly unnatural. "Those products, with bold flavors, are harder to retool and are marketed to teens and other consumers who might be turned off if told the chips were all-natural," reports the Wall Street Journal. So natural is a marketing term after all...