Designed to sell.

Can't you just see it? The ad agency staff racking its brains to find a new shtick that will make its product sell. Sometimes, it's all in the name. Call your candy bar an "energy bar" and it no longer sounds like junk. Call your supplement company "Nature Made" and maybe no one will notice that nature intended people to get vitamin C from fruit, not pills.

Or, try distractions. If your snack is full of sugar, point out that it's got less fat than chips. If your vegetable juice is full of salt, make it sound like each bottle is equal to three servings of broccoli.

Look at it this way: If you can fool some of the people some of the time, it might add up to a nice year-end bonus.

Calorie bar?

"High in protein, vitamins and minerals. Everything you expect from an energy bar, with the great taste you expect from Snickers," promises the ad for Snickers Marathon Energy Bars.

What do people expect from an energy bar? The name implies that it will make you feel more energetic than you'd feel after eating other foods. Wrong. When the word "energy" appears on a food label, it means "calories," nothing more. Apparently, "Calorie Bar" doesn't have the same appeal.

Marathon bars are largely caramel, corn syrup, and chocolate, spiked with protein (from a mixture of soy and whey protein isolate, peanut flour, and calcium caseinate).

In other words, they're still candy bars. They may be better than ordinary candy bars, but most of us aren't marathon runners. We don't need to swallow 150 to 220 calories in a few bites. In fact, foods with fewer calories per bite--like fruits and vegetables--would help us stay (or get) slimmer.

Snickers got one thing right: About the only people who might need energy bars are those in the middle of a marathon. For everyone else, there's ordinary food.

Truth Isn't

"Truth is, 29 cuts of beef are now considered lean by USDA standards, and 95% lean ground beef is one of them," says the ad from "America's Beef Producers."

Whoa. Sounds like you'd have to hunt for hours to find a cut of beef that isn't lean. In fact:

* Most ground beef isn't lean. One popular type is what the industry loves to call "85% lean." It's really 15% fat ... and it isn't lean.

* Lean beef isn't healthy. The USDA allows a "lean" claim on meat that has up to 4.5 grams of saturated fat--about a quarter of a day's worth--in a 3 oz. serving. Three ounces may be reasonable for a burger (it's a Quarter Pounder after cooking), but a 3 oz. steak?

* Scalpel, please. The industry measures fat content after scalpel-wielding lab technicians dissect the meat and remove the fat from the outside and inside. That's how it can say that "lean beef has about one more gram of saturated fat than a skinless chicken breast."

But a composite of all beef cuts--weighted to reflect how much people buy of each cut and carefully but more realistically trimmed so that there's no fat around the outside--has about 6 grams of sat fat in a 3 oz. serving. A 3 oz. skinless chicken breast has about 1 gram.

The whole truth? Or tire truth full of holes?

Chextzpah

"The responsible adult in you will want to read the bag," says the ad for Chocolate Turtle Chex Mix. Why? So you'll notice the "50% Less Fat than regular potato chips" claim on the front.

In fact, you're better off reading the small print in the ingredient list on the back. That's where you'll find that Chocolate Turtle Chex Mix consists mostly of refined corn meal and white flour, sugar, candy coated chocolate pieces, sugar-coated peanuts, butter, sugar, salt, and a host of artificial flavors and colors (Blue 2, Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 40).

It's bad enough that General Mills is selling junk. But to pretend that Chex Mix is healthy because it's got less fat than chips? That's chutzpah.

VSalt

"Need Help Checking Vegetables Off Your 'To Do' List?" asks the ad. No sweat. A 12 oz. bottle of V8 has "Three Full Servings of Vegetables."

Wrong. According to the government, a serving is 1/2 cup of vegetables or 3/4 cup (6 oz.) of vegetable juice. That puts two, not three, servings of veggies in a 12 oz. bottle of V8.

And what a two servings they are. For starters, the bottle of V8 delivers 880 milligrams of sodium. There's no way you'll stay under a 1,500 mg limit (if you're middle-aged or older) or even a 2,400 mg limit (if you're younger) after you squander 880 mg on a 70-calorie drink.

Second, V8 is mostly water and tomato concentrate. It's also got some carrot, celery, beet, parsley, lettuce, watercress, and spinach juice, but the company won't say how much. Surely, you're better off with two half-cup servings of broccoli, carrots, spinach, peas, or asparagus than with a salty glass of (mostly) tomato juice.

And since when would you want to check vegetables off your "To Do" list?

With Real Vegetable Specks

"Introducing Roasted Vegetable Ritz, with real vegetables roasted in for a delicious twist on a classic taste," says the ad.

The vegetables may be real (as opposed to what?), but Nabisco adds only around one gram--about 1/30 of an ounce--of them to each five-cracker (1/2 oz.) serving. (It should be closer to 10 crackers, but Ritz skimps on the serving size.) The crackers have more white flour, soybean oil, sugar, and partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil than the "dehydrated vegetable blend" that Nabisco makes such a fuss over.

Nabisco Wheat Thins Toasted Veggie Chips (also "made with real vegetables") are no better. They've got more cornstarch than vegetables.

What's next? Roasted Vegetable Chips Ahoy? Oreos? Nabisco could probably supply enough veggies for both lines with a vegetable patch in the CEO's parking spot.

Laboratory Made

"The Vitamin C antioxidant power of 8 oranges in 1 Nature Made tablet," says the ad. "If you're like most people, it's just not easy to get all the vitamin C antioxidants you want from food alone," it warns.

The vitamin C antioxidants you want? That's different than the vitamin C you need. If you eat 5 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, you should easily get the recommended levels of vitamin C: 75 milligrams for women or 90 mg for men.

If you don't eat fruits and vegetables, taking a 500 mg vitamin C pill won't replace them. An orange, for example, has not just vitamin C, but at least 5 percent of a day's calcium, potassium, vitamin B-l, and vitamin A, and 10 percent of a day's folate, not to mention three grams of fiber and all sorts of phytochemicals that Nature Made hasn't figured out how to squeeze into a pill.

What's more, it's not at all clear that "vitamin C can help elevate your immune system, promote healthy aging and help protect against free radicals," as the ad boasts.