Although Thanksgiving comes just once a year, the traditional meal often contains many calories and much fat. If eating healthy meals every day of the year is one of your goals, you can make your Thanksgiving meal healthier. Use healthy substitutions in your favorite foods, and add a few new dishes to make your traditional dinner healthier and save a substantial number of fat grams.
Healthier Turkey
Turkey without the skin is a low-calorie, healthy Thanksgiving dish, with 3 oz. of light and dark meat having 157 and 132 calories, respectively. However, you add calories by eating the skin, using a butter baster or frying the turkey. As you prepare the turkey for cooking, leave the skin on to help the turkey stay moist while it's cooking, but remove all the skin before you serve the bird. Rub spices on the turkey before cooking, and baste the turkey with its own juice or a fat-free chicken or turkey broth. Buy fat-free turkey gravy rather than making turkey gravy with the fat that drips off during the cooking process.
Remaking Classic Side Dishes
The ingredients you traditionally use to make your Thanksgiving side dishes, such as green beans and sweet potatoes, are healthy. All that changes however when you add the high-fat, high-sodium soups, large amounts of brown sugar, high-calorie marshmallows and cans of fried onions. Saute the green beans with minced onions in vegetable broth and top with raw or lightly toasted almonds. Mash cooked sweet potatoes, mix with 1 tbsp. milk and bake in a casserole dish until warm. Sprinkle it with a small amount of cinnamon and sugar and top with roasted pecans. Make mashed potatoes with skim milk rather than cream to save about 40 calories per tablespoon.
Healthy Additions
Provide healthy Thanksgiving additions to your dinner table. Serve a large, green salad as a nutrient-filled, calorie-saving alternative. One cup of green leaf lettuce has 8 calories, three leaves of romaine has 6 calories and an entire head of Boston or Bibb lettuce has about 20 calories. Add chopped vegetables of your choice to the greens. Serve with low-calorie dressings. Serve a bowl of walnuts or some whole-grain crackers with fat-free hummus as appetizers. Walnuts contain omega-3 fatty acids, while hummus and the crackers have filling fiber.
Lighter Thanksgiving Desserts
Pecan pies, pumpkin pies, cranberry pound cakes and heavy desserts may normally finish your Thanksgiving meal, but you can reduce the caloric content and serve healthier desserts. Make a pumpkin custard which has less than 80 calories a serving. Serve baked apples rather than apple pie. A lower calorie and fat-free dessert is angel food cake, which contains about about 129 calories per slice.
References
- University of Michigan Health System: Thanksgiving Dinner Can Be Healthy Without the Loss of Flavor-Packed Foods
- Texas A&M University Extension: AgriLife NEWS: Experts: Recipes Can Be Altered for Healthier Holiday Eating
- USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 17: Energy (PDF)
- Tufts University: Omega-3 Fatty Acids (PDF)
- Harvard Health Publication: Healthy Thanksgiving Recipes; November 2005
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