Spring taste buds

With beach season barely a month away, it’s time to finally get cracking on that diet regimen we’d originally scheduled to start on New Year’s Day.

For health-obsessed gourmets and gourmands, we took a look at two foodie magazines this week that sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. If you know and love food, then

Cooking Light’s 30th anniversary edition is for you.

If, on the other hand, you get most of your dinners from a mobile app or the fast food joint down the street, the spring edition of Eat This,

Not That! might be better for getting up to speed.

CL leads with a thoughtful, 20-page examination of “What Healthy Means Now.” Its opening paragraph acknowledges that, three decades ago, at the monthly’s inception, it was dispensing the Kool-Aid that being healthy meant you had to “eat this (reduced-calorie margarine), not that (actual butter).”

Back then, enjoying healthy food was not the point. But after billions of boneless, skinless and often tasteless chicken breasts, things have changed.

“The definition has evolved from prescriptive to progressive,” the magazine says.

CL takes us through these changes in three sections: “That was then” (1987), “This is now” (2017) and “This is next” (2047).

The insights on “then” and “now” ring true enough to make section three downright scary. Our takeaway: Eat all the natural wild fish your stomach can handle, while your wallet can still afford it.

As food magazines go, CL doesn’t share much with ETNT — except art directors obsessed with red, green and yellow.

The latter title, however, is perfect for uninformed eaters who could use a well-meaning parent at their side. Much of its advice steers readers from what Editor David Zinczenko calls “Frankenfoods.” For example, if you don’t know movie popcorn packs up to 60 percent of your recommended daily caloric intake, buy this quarterly.

Kudos to Meredith, ETNT’s publisher, for stomaching an investigation of “Fast Food Fails” by Dana Leigh Smith, who rounds up 15 of the usual suspects — from Burger King’s Double Whopper (850 calories) to Dairy Queen’s Chicken Strip Basket (1,360 calories) — then tells us how many hours of what ungodly exercise it will take to undo these impulse buys.