Healthy Food Choices: Hamburgers

Choosing some minor alternatives can help make your hamburgers a healthier dinner choice. Learn some tips on creating your own hamburgers in this video.

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Hamburgers are high in fat
Look for hamburgers with lean beef
Try limiting those high fat toppings

About this Author

Alice Merritt is currently the Campus Dietitian at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She has a masters degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in public health with a concentration on nutrition. Alice has worked as a registered dietician for four years, and believes that helping people reach their nutritional goals will lead to a long and healthy life.

ALICE MERRITT: Now I'm going to talk to you about hamburgers. Hamburgers are our all-American favorite food and they can actually be high in calories and fat. Healthy choices for hamburgers is if you make your hamburgers with leaner ground beef, like looking for 90% to 95% lean ground beef. You can also choose things like ground turkey or ground chicken that are going to be healthier alternatives to using ground beef, because they're lower in fat and also lower in calories. Another thing to think about when choosing hamburgers is to limit a lot of the high-fat toppings, such as cheese, bacon, mayonnaise. All of those things add fat and calories to a hamburger. Important things to remember when choosing hamburgers is, when you order a hamburger, make sure you get a side salad instead of the French fries. You can also try to get hamburgers on a whole wheat bun. Add lots of healthy toppings like lettuce, tomato, ketchup, onions. Any vegetables you like are a great addition to a hamburger. Also, remember using leaner sources of hamburger meat such as ground chicken, ground turkey, 90% to 95% lean ground beef. And to your hamburger, add a variety of other foods in with it. Vegetables are great, fruits, yogurt in order to balance out your hamburger meal. All of these things can help make hamburgers healthier.

Healthy Food Choices: Hamburgers Video

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