Lower-fat hot dogs, bacon, & sausage: the best of the wurst.

Bacon, hot clogs, sausage--some of the worst foods you can eat. Or at least they used to be.

The folks at Healthy Choice, Oscar Mayer, Hormel, and elsewhere have gotten religion. They've figured out that there's a market for processed meats with far less fat. And, in some cases, they've even cut the sodium. It's hard to find a big processed-meat maker that doesn't sell a lower-fat or lower-salt version of its hot dogs, bacon, or sausage.

And the plain truth is: The stuff that doesn't taste good tastes terrific. Anyone who's still buying fatty meats has probably never given their lower-fat cousins a whirl.

That's not to say that lower-fat bacon, hot dogs, and sausage are the foundation of a healthy diet. Most are still loaded with sodium.

And to play it safe, women who are pregnant shouldn't eat a steady diet of hot dogs, bacon, or sausage that's cured with sodium nitrite (check the label). Several studies have found a higher risk of brain tumors in children whose mothers ate cured meats frequently, but the evidence is uncertain.

"The studies haven't asked about the whole diet," says Greta Bunin, an epidemiologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "So cured meats may be an indicator of a high-fat diet or a lack of something found in fruits and vegetables or who knows what. Until we have studies that look at the whole diet, we won't know."

The bottom line: Processed meats aren't perfect foods. But when you want a BLT, something to grill on the backyard barbecue, or a sausage to spice up your dinner, at least now you've got plenty to pick from.

Bacon

Meat processors can't seem to resist challenging our label-reading skills. Maybe that's why a serving of Louis Rich Turkey Bacon, which has five grams of fat, appears to be only slightly better than a serving of Oscar Mayer (pork) Bacon, which has six grams.

The trick is that a serving of Louis Rich, like all turkey bacons, is a whole ounce of bacon before you fry it. In contrast, a serving of Oscar Mayer, like all pork bacons, is half an ounce of bacon after you've cooked it up.

Confused? Here's all you need to know: Ounce for ounce, even the fattiest turkey bacon has only a third the fat of regular pork bacon.

Just keep in mind that low-fat or fat-free turkey bacon is more likely to taste like corned beef or Canadian bacon (a leaner cut of pork) than ordinary pork bacon. The exception: Jennie-O Fat Free. If it weren't quite so chewy, you'd swear you were eating the real thing.

If you want the flavor and texture of real bacon--but not the 13 grams of fat per ounce--you'll have to spend four or five grams of fat on your turkey bacon. Mr Turkey, Louis Rich, and Butterball are all ringers for the fatty stuff, especially Butterball (maybe because it contains rendered bacon fat).

Whatever turkey bacon you use, just make sure your BLT (with low-fat mayo and whole wheat toast, of course) doesn't go beyond two strips. Otherwise, if the fat don't getcha, the sodium will. Think of bacon as a condiment that adds flavor to your lettuce and tomato sandwich.

Hot Dogs

It may not make your hands greasy, but an ordinary two-ounce hot dog has 16 grams of fat, seven of them saturated.

Why bother with regular hot dogs when we found nine companies that make franks with no more than two grams of fat (and four of them keep the sodium from topping 480 mg)?

We're not talking "lite," "lean," or "reduced-fat" franks, which typically have half the fat of regular dogs--still too much. We're not talking soy or veggie dogs (though we will in an upcoming issue).

And we're not necessarily talking chicken or turkey dogs. Mr Turkey Jumbo or Bun Size Franks may claim to have "33 1/3% less fat." But that's still 11 grams of fat you don't need. Wampler Foods Chicken Franks and Jennie-O Jumbo Turkey Franks also pack more than ten grams.

Low-fat and fat-free franks are now a dime a dozen. Here's our take on the Best Bites:

* Healthy Choice Beef Franks tasted best to us. A close second were Healthy Choice Franks (they're a mixture of beef, pork, and turkey). Like Eckrich and Butterball (which were too salty to get a Best Bite), they contain potato starch, and that seems to give them the texture of fatty, juicy hot dogs.

* Empire Kosher Turkey Franks were the only all-poultry dogs that met our sodium cutoff, though we did find them a tad rubbery. If you want to stick with poultry--not a bad idea, since red meat is linked to a higher risk of colon and prostate cancer--you should also try Butterball Fat Free Franks. At 490 mg of sodium each, they're just 10 mg over our limit (we had to set it somewhere).

* Ball Park Fat Free Franks or Fat Free Beef Franks may appeal to kids or to anyone who likes a mild-tasting hot dog. So will Oscar Mayer Free Hot Dogs, which were just 10 mg over our sodium cutoff.

* Hebrew National 97% Fat Free Beef Franks have the stronger flavor that should appeal to kosher hot dog fans.

Sausage

Forget claims like "lean" or "50 percent lower in fat." Instead, look for sausages that are "low-fat," "fat-free," or "97 percent fat-free." Here are our Best Bites:

* Healthy Choice sausages or breakfast sausages keep the numbers rock-bottom low and the flavor remarkably high.

* Jimmy Dean 97% Fat Free Breakfast Sausages also have that authentic sausage taste...and authentic low numbers.

* Wampler Foods Hot Italian Turkey Sausage and Shady Brook Farms Turkey Breakfast Sausage and Italian Turkey Sausage taste just like pork sausage.

* Bilinski's Chicken Sausages have a third the fat of Aidells. They taste less like sausage and more like wonderfully spiced ground chicken. So do Hans.

* Yorkshire Farms turkey sausages had good numbers and good taste. But the company's pork sausages and pork bacon appeared to have more fat than the labels declare, so we didn't print their pork numbers in our chart. We're asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to look into it.

Polska Kielbasas and Smoked Sausages from Eckrich (Fat Free), Louis Rich, and Mr Turkey were all delicious, but missed our fat or sodium cutoff.

RELATED ARTICLE: On the Links

Since sausages and hot dogs can range from small to large, we've ranked the foods in each category from lowest to highest percent of calories from fat. That lets you compare the meat, independent of the size of the piece you eat. Some companies only give numbers for their products before they've been cooked. We've listed those in italics.

"Best Bites" have no more than 45 percent of calories form fat and no more than 480 milligrams of sodium per serving.

[TABULAR DATA NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]