WHEN dieting, simple is better. Simple foods, simple recipes and simple numbers – like 100. The hard part is figuring out what 100 calories looks like. You could dial up a diet site and learn that it looks like half a Krispy Kreme doughnut, a scrambled egg, a shot of whiskey. Or you could pick up any of the new 100-calorie snack packs. We’ve rated a sample of these diet delicacies on a scale of one to five.

Hostess cupcake pack

Taste: Excellent – moist, sweet, creamy

Verisimilitude: We’ll say it – better than the original; plus you get the benefit of eating three of them.

What you’d rather be eating: Six more

Satisfaction: Hits the spot and you’ll feel good about yourself – until you see that the third ingredient is something called polydextrose.

Rating: Five smiley faces

Cheese Nips thin crisps

Taste: 70 percent cheese, 30 percent nip

Verisimilitude: Just like a normal Cheese Nip, only hexagonal rather than square

What you’d rather be eating: Cheese pizza

Satisfaction: For those who like their cheese in cracker form, it’s aces.

Rating: Three smiley faces

Oreo thin crisps

Taste: Like an old chocolate graham cracker scrounged from the seat cushion

Verisimilitude: None. Closer to a cracker than a cookie – and where’s the cream?

What you’d rather be eating: Um, Oreos

Satisfaction: Can’t get no.

Rating: None

South Beach Diet Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

Taste: Like licking a chemical drum that fell off the truck from New Jersey

Verisimilitude: Like your mother used to make – if your mother was Glaxo-Smith-Kline

What you’d rather be eating: Something that doesn’t come in a package warning that “excess consumption may have a laxative effect.”

Satisfaction: Just eat a real cookie, won’t you?

Rating: None

Baked Cheez Doodles crunchy

Taste: Cheesy, but definitely not cheez-y

Verisimilitude: Has that fluorescent orange color you can see from space but the taste isn’t quite there

Satisfaction: Your 10-year-old might be able to trade this for something better in the lunchroom

Rating: Two smiley faces

Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popping Corn mini bag

Taste: A little dry

Verisimilitude: Less oily, not as much artificial butter flavoring – depending on your viewpoint, a good or bad thing.

What you’d rather be eating: Popcorn Indiana’s Kettle Corn

Satisfaction: Ideal afternoon snack if you don’t mind annoying your colleagues with office-unfriendly microwave popcorn smell

Rating: Four smiley faces