***Quick View:*** My husband is thin and can eat anything he wants in any quantity and never gains an ounce. I am average but I fight like heck to stay that way so I avoid high calorie, high fat foods as much as possible. However, on a recent trip, hungry hubby brought along Hellema - Taste of Holland Shortbread Cookies to nibble on as we drove. How can something so good be so bad for you? It was worth the calories and fat to have a few of these. They are delicious.**About Hellema - Taste of Holland Cookies, Shortbread** Regular shortbread cookies are awesome but these are awesome-r. They come in seven ounce boxes and the cookies are small but so tasty. There isn't a lot of junk in these as far as chemically derived ingredients. The list is as follows: *Wheat Flour, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil Soybean, Palm, Canola, Sugar Whey Powder Soy Flour, Sodium Invert Sugar Syrup, Salt, Milk Solids, Leavening (Sodium Bicarbonate, Glucono Delta-Lactone), Artificial Vanillin and Butter Flavors.* The cookies are crazy delicious. I wanted them all. I could see how people could go out of control and eat a whole bag of cookies. I never understood that until now. Then I looked at the calories and fat. Each little cookie is 80 calories which is pretty good. But, each also contains 5 grams of fat. FIVE! In one little cookie. I ate three on the way meaning I literally ate half my fat for the day in three little cookies. Ouch. And there was no nutrition in these to make up for all that fat. As far as whether it is good or bad fat, each has 1.5 grams of saturated fat and I don't see anywhere that there is tans fat which is really bad. Still the fat in these is not good fat like that which comes from peanut butter. But, oh, the taste. I can imagine sitting down with a steaming mug of Earl Grey tea and five of these cookies, nibbling slowly as I enjoyed my tea. But that won't happen. Every time I eat them, I will be calculating the fat in them and thinking of my clogged arteries. Still, these are delicious treats that my husband gobbled down and started on box number two before we passed the two-hour mark in our drive. He has a cholesterol level of 152. Mine is almost 200. I can't eat like that and he can't either when I am around again! Ha! ***My Viewpoint*** These are delicious, rich cookies that are totally addictive. One is OK but more than that and you are just consuming so much fat with no real return in nutrition. Still a wonderful treat that I long to eat until I am so full I can't move. I won't but a girl can dream, can't she? ***4 stars***. They are 5 star cookies but the fat takes them down a star.

PattyTherre

The heart of , NY