No special diet cereals.

Special K used to be the diet cereal (thanks to Kellogg's marketing department, not the contents of the box). Now others want a piece of the action.

The most disappointing: overly sweet Weight Watchers cereals (the fake cinnamon and vanilla varieties taste more like toothpaste than cereal). Their 90 to 170 calories per serving--depending on whether they're sweetened with the safe artificial sweetener Splenda (sucralose) or evaporated cane juice--are no less than most similar cereals.

What's more, much of the fiber in Weight Watchers comes not from whole grains, but from inulin, a carbohydrate that's typically isolated from chicory root. Inulin is considered fiber because it's poorly digested. But like all isolated fibers, it may not reduce the risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, or constipation as well as the intact fiber in whole grains.

In short, dieters (and anyone else) could do better with almost any of our Best Bites. If you have a sweet tooth, try South Beach Diet Whole Grain Crunch or Fiber One Honey Clusters. Both are sweetened with Splenda but don't have the cloying, sweet aftertaste of Weight Watchers.

Caution: you can cut calories to 50 or 60 per serving by switching to a cereal like regular Fiber One or All-Bran Extra Fiber, which are sweetened with aspartame. But it's not worth it. The artificial sweetener, which has had a troubled history, increased the risk of cancer in a study in rats last year.