Nestea Enviga.

•Green Tea, Berry, and Peach.

• $1.29 to $1.49 per 12-ounce can

Bonnie: Voodoo nutrition, lawsuits and a promise of burning calories by just drinking. I'm talking about Enviga, a carbonated, canned green-tea beverage collaboration between food giants Coke and Nestle. It consists of carbonated water, calcium, concentrated green tea, natural flavors, and ingredients generally found in diet colas - caffeine, phosphoric acid and artificial sweeteners (aspartame and acesulfame potassium). It's the green-tea extracts, which are high in the antioxidant epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG, that when combined with caffeine (the amount in a cup of coffee) purportedly burn calories.

Hogwash, I say! Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal calls it "voodoo nutrition." This month, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition-advocacy group, filed a federal lawsuit against Coke and Nestle over claims that drinking three cans of Enviga will burn 60 to 100 calories. That's right - by doing nothing more than downing three cans of their beverage, they say, you'll burn calories - that is, only if you're a healthy, normal-weight 18- to 35-year-old, according to the small print on the back of the can.

Promises like this exploit dieters' dreams that there's no need to exercise or cut calories: They can just sit in front of the TV with their remote and drink a beverage that will burn calories. Enviga is no magic bullet. At $1.50 a can, there's only one thing Enviga is sure to burn: your hard-earned money.

Carolyn: There's a ton of progress in this food-obsessed world, and it's why I'm inclined to believe those who say a drug or vaccine that effectively controls weight gain will be widely available in our lifetimes. Until that happens, Enviga may be the most we can hope for.

Enviga isn't the first negative-calorie food or drink. I've heard people say you can actually burn more calories eating Sugar-Free Jell-O than it contains, for instance. Enviga and the similar Celsius drink are just the first products to have entire marketing campaigns based on this idea.

The problem is that a loss of about 20 calories per can of soda consumed isn't much. In fact, the "get moving" calculator at the Calorie Control Council's Web site (www.caloriecontrol.org) suggests that you could burn up that much by walking into the store and buying a can.

Frankly, I think Nestea's much greater accomplishment is in making green tea taste good, as with the Berry Enviga. It didn't even try to make the Green Tea flavor taste good, and the Peach has a strong green-tea aftertaste.

Life Chocolate Oat Crunch

• $3.49 per 13.3-ounce or $3.99 per 17.6-ounce box.

Bonnie: I neither like nor recommend sugary breakfast cereals, so I expected to dislike Life Chocolate Oat Crunch. It's one of the many recently introduced chocolate products to ride the "chocolate is good for you" wave. The top of the box boasts "made with real chocolate," but the bottom says "real chocolate in chocolate-flavored clusters." Translated: Some of this is artificial.

There's still not that much chocolate in the cereal.

Quaker has included just enough to provide a little sweetness per spoonful, which is why I don't mind it. A serving provides a decent 3 grams of fiber, two of the three daily servings of whole grains recommended in the dietary guidelines and only 11 grams of sugar. Not bad, Quaker.

Carolyn: College is where many people have their first taste of alcohol and sex. For me, it was the first place I saw someone put chocolate chips in pancakes. Now, of course, chocolate chip muffins and coffee cake and chocolate-flavored kids' cereal like Cocoa Puffs and Cocoa Krispies are common breakfast fare (especially at my house).

But even I never thought to add chocolate to an "adult" cereal until I saw this Life Chocolate Oat Crunch.

It was obviously inspired by the reams of new research showing the antioxidant health benefits of dark chocolate.

Nevertheless, the health claims on this box have only to do with the cholesterol- and heart disease- fighting properties of whole grains.

The taste is also mostly of Life, with a chocolate accent courtesy of some chocolate-flavored granola clusters. Fortunately, I like Life, which to me is like a smaller, sweeter, better-tasting shredded wheat. The little bit of chocolate flavor in Life Chocolate Oat Crunch makes this Life variety just a little bit better.

South Beach Diet Frozen Wraps

• Chicken Monterey, Herb Chicken, and Teriyaki Steak

• $3.70 per 8.3-ounce box containing two wraps.

Bonnie: Kraft continues to add lots of prepared foods for South Beach dieters to buy and try, with frozen wraps in three flavors as the latest addition.

Even though I was hungry when I tested these, I couldn't finish more than a bite of any. They are just vile. They tasted saltier than the stated 460 to 560 milligrams of sodium per wrap. That salty taste is probably from their many additives.

If you're thinking of purchasing these, I suggest you read the ingredient list. If there are more than two or three items you can't pronounce or don't recognize, don't buy it. Consider that as a general rule of thumb when buying processed foods like these.

I also don't think that wraps freeze and microwave well. The shell often cracks and breaks before you even get it to the oven. And once cooked, the tortilla turns into something too soggy to hold in your hand, the way wraps are meant to be eaten.

Carolyn: Are you a huge fan of vinegary pork and sauerkraut, or do you top your ham sandwiches with tons of Dijon mustard? Have I got a couple of sandwiches for you! South Beach's frozen Herb Chicken wrap contains high- quality white chicken, tomatoes and asparagus pieces, but I could barely taste them underneath the strong and vinegary mustard-like sauce. The Teriyaki Steak's potentially tasty and tender meat, carrots and broccoli are similarly buried under a vinegary teriyaki sauce.

Low-fat and no-fat salad dressings are infamous for this vinegar problem. But the South Beach Diet and these wraps are about low- carb, not low-fat. Me? I'm about avoiding too-vinegary foods and other bad foods. So I was all ready to write off these new frozen wraps as an unpleasant part of my job when I tried the Chicken Monterey. It was tasty, in a pimento-pepper-cheese sort of way, and it totally lacked a strong mustard or vinegary smell and taste. Ironically (and inexplicably), it's the only one of the South Beach Diet Wrap three that actually contains vinegary mustard.

Bonnie Tandy Leblang is a registered dietitian and professional speaker. Carolyn Wyman is a junk-food fanatic and author of "Better Than Homemade: Amazing Foods That Changed the Way We Eat" (Quirk).

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