Food Quiz: How to Avoid Sabotaging Your Diet

You've made the resolution to eat better in the New Year and you consider yourself a person with a solid dose of common sense, But are you unintentionally sabotaging yourself with your food choices?

Joel Weber is the author of "The Big Book of Food & Nutrition" and a contributor to Men's Health magazine. On "The Early Show" Thursday, Weber put common sense to the test with five "self-sabotage hot spots" at the grocery store and on the menu.

Read an excerpt of "The Big Book of Food & Nutrition

White or Yellow Cheese: What's better for you?

In general, yes, selecting paler cheeses is a good rule of thumb if you're trying to lose weight. All cheese has a lot of fat in it. But there are a lot of myths out there about fat. In paler cheeses, these are natural fats and those are actually good for us. But what's interesting is that fat actually contains more calories than proteins and carbohydrates, so it just adds up faster. In general, the white cheeses contain less fat than the yellow cheeses. Brie, for instance, contains to 20 fewer calories per ounce than cheddar.

Regular dressing or fat-free dressing?

There are a lot of myths out there on this stuff. It turns out that when you add fat with greens, like vegetables, it actually increases the bioavailability of the nutrients and vitamins in the salad. One study says 15 times as much beta-carotene out of those vegetables will enter your body and that doesn't happen when you have the fat-free stuff. So go for the full-fat dressings.

Brown rice or white rice?

Brown rice. When we refine things we are stripping away all the fiber and the germ and everything that makes it digest slowly. As a result your blood sugar spikes and you end up more hungry later. Whenever you're opting for carbohydrates opt for whole-grain.

Canola oil or vegetable oil?

Canola Oil. The biggest swap you should make is to take the vegetable oil out and put canola oil in across the board. The difference between the two is that canola oil comes from grapeseed. Vegetable oil comes from soybeans and corn with higher amount of mega 6s and 3S. This is a much better ratio, about two to one. Omega 6 one of the big problems in our American diets right now. So opt for the canola oil.

Turkey bacon or regular bacon?

Regular bacon. You can eat bacon and still be okay. Turkey bacon is not 100 percent bird, so go for something that's real whenever you are in doubt. If you look on the package for any food, if it doesn't go bad, it's probably not good for you. If you can come back to it in six weeks or four weeks or three weeks and it looks the same, it's probably not good for you. Opt for the things that are perishable and go bad.