Model Ishika picks up her favourite sugar-free cookies from Spencer’s Hyper store in South City Mall, Calcutta

So what do Amul Lite skimmed milk, Miruna Yo yoghurt drink (or lassi), Tropicana Sugar Free Lemonade and Dana Danish Jam have in common? For one, they are all favoured foods and more importantly, they are all cleverly low on calories.

Walk into upscale supermarkets and you’ll be amazed at the deluge of low-fat ice creams, cookies, chocolates and health drinks filling the shelves (and flying off them as well). No prizes for guessing why: these low- calorie foods will ensure that you don’t miss out too much even when you stick to a strict diet plan. In other words — you can munch on low-cal cookies or chocolates minus the guilt pangs.

Nutritionist Anjali Mukherjee explains the sudden rush for diet foods: “The search for healthier versions of one’s favourite food has led to a boom in consumption of packaged ready-to-eat diet food.”

Consider the figures: a normal soft drink or cola (say about 1 litre) that’s packed with about 300 calories is almost certain to take your diet off the road. But a diet drink like a Diet Coke/Diet Pepsi which contains just one calorie thanks to aspartame (a low calorie sweetener used to sweeten a wide variety of low calorie foods and beverages), means you can take worry-free swigs of these drinks.

Ever imagined you could enjoy a glass of fresh iced tea without thinking of the sugar packed into it? With Sugarfree D’Lite Ice Tea, for instance, you will consume 85 per cent less calories than a regular soft drink. And yes, it contains aspartame, which according to Anand Dev, senior vice president, consumer product division, Cadila Healthcare Limited of the Zydus Cadila Group, is approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Food and Drug Administration.

Dev says: “It’s safe to consume less than 40mg of aspartame per kg of your bodyweight. All our products — iced tea or bottled and ready-to-mix drinks — contain no more than 25mgm of aspartame which is well within the statutory mark.”

Spice up your diet with low-oil salad dressings from Fabindia Fortuna, Calcutta; (Above) Sugar-free gelato has acceptable sugar substitutes that makes it safe as diet food

Some 10 years ago, the brand’s products were popular with diabetics. But today, more than 30 per cent of their consumers are health freaks, not to forget ladies who like to sip soft drinks at a party without having to agonise over the calories.

At Calcutta’s Fabindia Fortuna in Woodburn Park there’s an increasing demand for low-oil salad dressings and oil-free pickles (made with lime juice and vinegar). It’s now possible to bite into low-oil lime-chilli-ginger pickle, sweet sour chilli pickle and the more traditional hing ka aam pickle.

Fabindia also stocks jams and marmalades made with sulphurless sugar that’s low on calories and roasted snacks that include the healthful whole masoor and sprouted moong. At Spencer’s Hyper store in South City Mall, Dana Danish jams and Murray’s sugar-free oatmeal cookies have a huge fan following.

Top-of-the line Indian brands too have their selection of off-the-shelf diet foods. Take the case of Amul Lite which is a skimmed milk with zero calories and cholesterol though it contains all the proteins, vitamins and minerals found in natural milk.

Amul’s Prolife Sugar-Free Probiotic Wellness Dessert contains 50 per cent less fat than normal ice cream in its five flavours — that’s vanilla with chocolate sauce, strawberry, chocolate, shahi anjir and litchi. The sugar has been replaced with a combination of low calorie sweeteners (fructo-oligo saccharide and sucralose) while its probiotic cultures aid in digestion.

Also, sugar-free ice creams, sorbet and gelato have acceptable sugar substitutes — sucralose — approved by WHO that makes them safe as diet foods.

Even salted snacks have become healthier. You can dig into Garden Namkeen’s Diet Bhel, a spicy mixture of roasted split grams, puffed rice and rice flakes. And when you think of zero-fat yoghurt drinks you could go for Balan Natural Food’s Miruna Yo — a blend of fruit juices, light skimmed yoghurt and milk.

But are these ready-to-eat diet foods effective substitutes for weight-watchers? Organic food expert Jayshree Joshi Eashwar feels that off-the-shelf diet foods can work if they’re part of an overall plan to be sensible about food and exercise. “These foods are often touted by dieticians as part of an ‘allowance’ of a certain calorie count.”

Mukherjee feels that since no single food or diet food is responsible for magical results, it is important to consume a variety of healthy foods, preferably fresh and natural (hence unprocessed), to derive the nutrition our body needs.

Though diet foods and drinks are better options than carbonated soft drinks and maida-based and trans-fat laden processed foods, one must avoid going overboard with them.

So when you pick that low-calorie cookie pack from the nearest supermarket, be ready to sort through the claims and avoid the scams. For instance, a food claiming to be low in fat may be deficient in nutrients and high in sugar, starches or additives. Since off-the-shelf diet foods are made commercially and on a large scale, they tend to be high in sodium, preservatives, colourants and sweeteners.

The bottomline: there are some diet foods that are good for you because they are roasted instead of deep-fried. “But some processed foods such as spreads or aerated drinks often have chemicals which affect the kidneys — the very thing diabetics or people with cardiac problems need to protect,” says Eashwar.

But then, off-the-shelf diet foods continue to be hot on the food mart as they are ready-to-eat and if chosen carefully can also help to lose weight. So be selective and go the lean way.

(Additional reporting by Angona Paul)