With Thanksgiving in our rearview mirror and winter holidays approaching, we have entered one of our most cheerful times of the year, filled with festive togethers and foods. It can also be a challenging time to maintain healthy eating habits, as traditional holiday foods often contain large amounts of sugar, saturated fats, and salt that we need to limit our intake for our health. How about instead of abstaining from your favorite dishes, you make a healthier, improved version of it? As a follow-up to our November article on “Making Meals Safer this Holiday Season,” today we will be exploring strategies for how to make healthy twists on our favorite holiday dishes and beverages. So go ahead, plan to make that reduced-guilt cake and eat it too!

Reduce, Take Away, or Substitute

One strategy for making our meals healthier is tweaking our ingredients. Often we can reduce sugar, salt, and/or saturated fats in our meals without significantly impacting their flavor. For example, instead of using all the butter a recipe calls for, use half and substitute the rest with foods similar in texture, like unsweetened applesauce or mashed bananas. Instead of using whole milk or cream, swap in reduced-fat dairy options, like half-and-half or low-fat milk. For example, I make a green bean casserole for my family’s gatherings that uses low-fat milk and flour with sauteed mushrooms instead of using a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup, which helps reduce the salt and saturated fat going into my dish.

Sometimes you don’t even need to add or substitute ingredients, just don’t use as much. For example, cutting back on foods like cheese, nuts, frosting, and chips allows other food ingredients in your dish to shine. Often the amount of ingredients like mayonnaise and jelly can be reduced as well without changing the flavor profile of the dish.

Supercharge Your Festive Fare with Fiber, Flavor, and Color

You can also add ingredients to your favorite holiday foods that supercharge their nutritional content, flavor, and sometimes even aesthetic appeal! For example, adding fiber to our dishes is a great way to bulk up the nutrition and health benefits. Fiber is a friend to our health; it not only helps keep our digestive tract moving, but also helps lower cholesterol and may even reduce blood clot formation that can lead to a heart attack or stroke. So instead of using white rice, try brown rice or whole wheat pasta instead. If you are serving bread, offer whole-grain bread or rolls. You can also try incorporating a variety of different colored fruits and vegetables in your dish, or serve them up as side dishes. The different colors of fruits and vegetables are often associated with the presence of different beneficial nutrients, such as anthocyanins with reds and purples and carotenoids with red, orange, and yellow. Fruits are also good dessert options as well! Also look to your spice cabinet to shake things up and add some more flavor without reaching for the salt shaker. Common spices I find myself reaching for this time of year include cinnamon, garlic, onion powder, all-spice, or cayenne pepper if you like it spicy!

Experiment with different cooking methods

In addition to tweaking our recipe ingredients, there are also healthier ways to cook our favorite meals. Cooking techniques such as steaming, grilling, and broiling use less oil than frying. So try preparing your vegetables, meats, and fish with these different techniques and see which method you like best! You can also use nonstick cooking ware to reduce the amount of oil needed. Also if your recipe calls for basting, try substituting fruit juice or vinegar instead of oil.

Rethink Drinks

Often we don’t consider the amount of sugar we ingest in our drinks, but the sugar in sweetened beverages like soda and sweet tea slowly adds up with every sip. Offering an array of healthier drink options is a great way to reduce your sugar intake and makes it fun for everyone to try new beverages! In addition to serving water, you can offer unsweetened ice tea with mint leaves or seltzer water with a variety of 100% juices for everyone to add a splash to create their own, healthy concoction.

Pay Attention to Portions

We might have a favorite dish that we look forward to every year and we know is not the healthiest for us (mine is buffalo chicken dip!). Instead of cutting it out completely, reduce your portion size. Based on nutritional recommendations from MyPlate from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we want to aim for ½ of our plates being fruits and vegetables. So why not load up on fruits and vegetables first and fill in the rest of your plate with your favorites? Also you can prevent overeating by eating more slowly and stopping when you are feeling about 80% full, which is a component of mindful eating.

For more information about reinventing your favorite meals in a healthier way, contact North Carolina Cooperative Extension at the Lee County Center and ask Meredith Favre or Ashley Szilvay, our Local Foods Agent and Family and Consumers Sciences Agent respectively, for more information.