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Those health people knock popcorn, Chinese food and fettucine Alfredo for their fat content have more grim news: They say the Cinnabon cinnamon roll is loaded with fat and calories but has little nutritional value.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that it had studied 16 different muffins or desserts sold in six popular restaurant chains: Cinnabon, Au Bon Pain, Starbucks, Mrs. Fields, Vie de France and the Cheesecake Factory.

The results: While some low-fat, tasty options are out there, many of the items have as many calories and as much fat as a full meal.

Jayne Hurley, conductor of the study and senior nutritionist at CSPI, said the research showed that one Cinnabon cinnamon roll contains 670 calorie and 34 grams of fat - as much as a Big Mac and a McDonald's hot fudge sundae combined.

Cinnabon's measure of its roll's fat and calorie count is very close to CSPI's findings. Cinnabon says its classic cinnamon role contains 810 calories and 33 grams of fat, eight of which are saturated, while CSPI measured only 670 calories but 34 grams of fat, 14 of which were saturated.

Other results of the CSPI research:

One slice of the Cheesecake Factory's Original Cheesecake packs 710 calories and 49 grams of fat, equal in fat content to a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pepperoni Pizza plus two Dairy Queen Banana Splits.

A cinnamon scone from Starbucks has 530 calories and 34 grams of fat.

Au Bon Pain's pecan roll contains 800 calories and 45 grams of fat, which is more fat than what's in an ``entire breakfast of two eggs, two strips of bacon, two sausage links, and two pancakes with margarine,'' Hurley said.

Leading U.S. killers: Little has changed in four years - Americans are still dying of the same two diseases, heart disease and cancer, that killed them most often in 1992, according to statistics recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although the age-adjusted death rates for both diseases have declined by 27.2 percent and 36.3 percent, respectively, since 1979, these diseases remain the Nos. 1 and 3 causes of death in the United States.

The largest increase in age-adjusted death rates is for HIV infection, which jumped 9.5 percent from 1992 to 1993, according to the CDC.

For all top 10 causes of death, the rates are higher for men than for women and - with the exceptions of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and suicide - are higher in African-Americans than whites.

White American women can expect to live the longest - 79.5 years, followed by African-American women with 73.7 years, white men, 73.1 years and African-American men, 64.6 years.

And, in one state at least - Texas - more people were killed with guns than motor vehicles for the fifth straight year, according to a report in the monthly journal Texas Medicine.

In 1990, guns surpassed motor vehicles as the leading cause of injury-related death in the Lone Star State.