Snap, crackle and you'll go pop!

Are you the victim of calorie-creep?

According to The Guardian, things really ain't what they used to be. Many popular brands contain more calories than they did even 10 years ago. The paper found that Rice Krispies, for example, contain 10% more calories while both Haagen-Dazs Belgian Chocolate ice-cream and the supposedly health Jordan's Crunchy Bars contain 16% more calories.

The Food Commission suggest that manufacturers have responded to demands to reduce salt by increasing sugar and fat content - the cheap and easy way to retain a little flavour.

There wassome good news - high-fibre Heinz baked beans were down in calories from 72 to 69. But if the sample of foods examined by The Guardian is in any way representative, the majority of pacakaged foods have been altered in this way.

Couple this with the fact that portion size is increasing — king-size bars, super-sizing and going large — and you begin to see how these relatively small increases in calories can make a differance to your waist-line.

The trouble is that reading food labels may not help you to understand what is going on. Mostly calorific values are measured in grams and who knows how many grams they eat of a particular product? It's another good reason - and here's the real moral of the story - for keeping the amount of prepared food you buy to a minimum and buying fresh ingredients as far as possible.