Healthy Alternatives To Thanksgiving Dinner/ Alternatives to Thanksgiving Dinner Healthy menu ideas and recipes for vegetarian, gluten free and a more nutritious Thanksgiving Day meal. Healthy Alternatives for Thanksgiving Dinner. Thanksgiving dinner comes our ability to consume inhuman amounts of food at a single meal, Thanksgiving dinner consumption + 5,000 calories. While gluttony is certainly in season, you can make the meal a little healthier with a few tweaks to the menu.
Turkey
The star attraction of the day is actually one of the healthier items on your plate nutrients in turkey + SuperFood, so don’t be shy about taking an extra helping. If you stick with white meat without the skin, a serving only has about 150 calories and less than a gram of fat. As for all the T-Day talk about, tryptophan turkey not enough to make you sleepy, don’t fall for it.
“It’s the sheer quantity of food that people eat on Thanksgiving that puts them in that sleepy food coma, not the little bit of tryptophan you’re getting in the turkey,” notes Tara Gidus, RD, a nutritionist in Orlando.
Low calorie turkey baste, turkey + white meat vs.dark meat, Portion size for roast turkey + 3.5 oz. + deck of cards
Gravy
The good news is that this turkey, mashed potato and stuffing accompaniment isn’t all that bad for you. While it can be a bit greasy, it’s mostly just juices from the bird plus a little flour or cornstarch for thickening. Sodium content + turkey gravy + 344 mg + quarter cup, tips for making healthy turkey gravy, How to separate fat from turkey drippings, Turkey gravy + serving size + quarter cup
Mashed potatoes
Although the white variety sometimes gets a bad rap, potatoes aren’t really the problem here, white potatoes + health benefits. With mashed potatoes, the unhealthy culprits are all the high-fat, high-calorie stuff you add to the basic spuds. Mix in a stick of butter, whole milk, and you’ve got a side dish that can deliver in the neighborhood of 10 grams of fat per serving-spoon-full. Reducing calories in mashed potatoes, Yukon gold + best potatoes for mashed potatoes, Mashed potato serving + 2/3 cups
Sweet potato casserole
While it’s hard to quantify the total damage without seeing your secret family recipe for this Thanksgiving concoction, it’s pretty safe to assume that this dish is packing quite a whollop. The sweet potatoes themselves are innocent participants, health benefits of sweet potatoes, but once they meet up with a couple of cups of brown sugar, some butter, and a bag of mini marshmallows, those potatoes are now super high in calories, fat and sugar. Low-fat topping options for sweet potato casserole, Yam + rarely found in U.S. + called sweet potato, Sweet potato casserole serving size + 2/3 cup
Stuffing
Again, the real issue here isn’t the basic ingredient but what else you add to it, rice alternative to stuffing.
“In order to make it moist, people add things that are high in fat—like oil or butter,” says Gidus. Add that’s before they toss in the other really high-fat extras like sausage. The better approach is to skip the high-cal, high-fat add-ins and opt for ones that are lower in both fat and calories, provide a little extra nutrition, and spread out the bread a bit so that the overall dish is lower in calories. Vegetables + stuffing, Stuffing vs. dressing + inside or alongside the bird
Dinner rolls
With all the yummy stuff on the table, you need to include this filler of a dish on your menu? But if it’s tradition to have a basket of rolls, dinner rolls for thanksgiving, on your Thanksgiving table and you can’t mess with tradition on this sacred holiday then at least look for a better option than crescents that are packed with extra butter. Muffins + whole wheat + reduced carbs + dinner rolls
