Talk about an easy, quick dinner. Boil noodles. Heat jarred sauce in a pot. Pour sauce over pasta and serve.

But when it comes to food, convenience, unfortunately, so often means you're getting additives and undesirable "extras" in whatever it is you're eating. And jarred spaghetti sauce is no exception.

Are there any good jarred sauces out there? Let's take a look.

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Tomato Sauce: Reading labels is key here. Some organic sauces contains nothing beyond what you might use in a homemade sauce -- tomato puree, onions, salt, olive oil, garlic and spices. But some of the more mainstream brands have more added sugar than chocolate fudge sauce. And just about all the sauces have about 25 percent of your sodium allowance for the day. Consider buying plain boxed or canned diced/pureed tomatoes and spicing them yourself for a quick sauce.

It feels like every other week we're hearing about a beef recall due to E. coli or salmonella contamination. Either that or we're reading how eating beef will cause everything from heart disease to cancer to global warming. What to do? Can beef be a healthy part of your family's diet, or should you shun those Styrofoam trays of rib steaks and ground sirloin in the meat case?

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Grain-Fed Beef, a.k.a. "Regular Beef": Aside from the fact that, as a red meat, beef can raise our risk of contracting such diseases as colon cancer, studies are starting to show that not just the beef, but how it's raised, is a problem for us health-wise. A report in the International Journal of Obesity indicates that the hormones in conventionally raised, grain-fed beef could be a contributing factor to our nation's obesity crisis. In addition, the corn fed to our cattle--natural grass-eaters--makes them sick, necessitating the continuous use of antibiotics. It's best to limit your consumption of this kind of beef.

Chocolate season is upon us. Whether you're nibbling on the assorteds from a red satin box or your kids are popping mini hearts bequeathed by adoring schoolmates, chances are there's chocolate in your house somewhere. So should you worry about this Valentine's Day staple, given chocolate is sweet and oh-so-fatty? Or is chocolate now kind of a healthy choice, thanks to those studies showing how this food of the gods can actually lower blood pressure?

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Dark Chocolate: Studies have shown that dark chocolate containing a high percentage of cocoa (70 percent or more) does in fact do good things for us. Thanks to the flavonoids and antioxidants found in cocoa, chocolate not only has the potential to lower blood pressure, but it also can reduce diabetes risk and improve cardiovascular health. This doesn't mean that you should feel free to down a king-size bar, however. Even high-quality dark chocolate is full of calories and fat. Savor just a few squares a day.

Rice is a staple food for many cultures around the world--cultures that don't have the kind of obesity problem that we do here in the U.S. But many Americans have a bit of a rice fear, thinking that, as a carb, rice will make you fat. So should we be wary of rice? Or is it a perfectly good food to spoon onto your family's plates come dinnertime?

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Brown Rice: Brown rice is an incredibly healthy food -- even Uncle Ben's microwavable quick-cooking version makes the list of top 10 superfoods put together by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Brown rice is packed with fiber, manganese, selenium, magnesium and other nutrients. Overall, it's an excellent choice. Just be sure to soak the raw rice in water 1-8 hours prior to cooking in order to neutralize its phytic acid, a compound present in brown rice that can block absorption of zinc and other minerals.

Thanksgiving is behind us, and since then many of us have been battling against potential repetitive motion injuries: Reaching for and plucking, again and again, hors d'oeuvres off of waiters' trays and holiday party buffet tables. Our kids, meanwhile, have been offered cookies and cakes at every turn. But the real gorge-fest hasn't even begun yet.

Get ready for the imminent Christmas and Kwanzaa feasts, and all the rich, fatty goodness they provide. But is it all bad? Are you and your kids doomed to suffer an empty-calorie, end-of-year bloat? Let's take a look at some of the traditional foods served during these holidays and see whether they're safe, or scary ...

During Hanukkah, Jewish people around the world retell and celebrate the story that one day's supply of oil miraculously lasted for eight days when the Maccabees liberated Jerusalem and rededicated the holy temple. And one of the ways they celebrate this is by consuming lots of food fried in oil, including potato latkes (pancakes) and jelly doughnuts.

Are there other, healthier foods served during Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, to complement all that grease? Well, there's your gelt (chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil) and cheese blintzes and ... yeah. Not so much with the healthy.

So is all the traditional Hanukkah fare just full-on scary food that should be avoided?

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