by Rosa Hayes

Created on: November 19, 2007

Picture a guy sitting down in a restaurant eating a bag of chips. Now, picture that same guy telling you that it is okay to eat it because it now contains nutritional value. Would you consider eating it yourself? What if I told you that there are a lot of junk food companies that are trying to make their food more nutritious so that more consumers would buy it, would you eat it then?

CoCa-Cola is one of the many companies that are working their way to making their junk food items like the Diet Coke Plus line, much more nutritious. The Diet Coke Plus line now provides 15 percent of your daily value for niacin and vitamin B6 and B12, plus 10 percent of zinc and magnesium per 8 ounce serving.

Another favorite company of consumers is the company Pepsi-Co. They have come out with a drink called Tava that will be marketed as a sparkling beverage. Tava will have 10 percent of your daily needs for vitamins B and E. Drinks like the Tava drink and the Diet Coke Plus line are a bit of an oxymoron when it comes to drinking healthy soft drink. Could you imagine what might happen when they start to come out with so called healthy candy bars?

Want even healthier junk food products? Hershey's has brought out the healthy sweet tooth in all of us. They have come out with the Ice Breakers Restore Pomegranate lemon Aid mints. What does this mean for the person with a sweet tooth? You can now have a sugar free candy that is packed with vitamins like A, C, E, and Zinc.

One junk food item that has made it onto the list of hundreds of food items on shelves is the, Nabisco Garden Harvest chips. For every 1 ounce serving, you get the equivalent of a half a days serving of fruits and vegetables.

So, with all the healthy snack choices out there, does this mean that we should all start eating more of it? With the good, you must also take the bad. The choices might be wiser if you are going to be eating junk food anyways but they are still no substitute for healthier items. These are just a few of the items that junk food companies are coming out with to try to get people to purchase their items. With all the diets that people are now on, junk food companies wanted to create a way to say that it is okay to eat a junk food item ever now and then.

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