By Melissa Tennen, HealthAtoZ writer
It's time to talk turkey and stuffing -- not that stuffing inside the bird but the stuffing inside your tummy.
It's the beginning of holiday feasting season. It's also a time to try to stay healthy.
Consider this: The typical holiday meal is full of fat and calories from gravy made with meat drippings and from Aunt Mabel's chocolate fudge cake. Studies have shown that fats, particularly those found in vegetable shortening, margarine and some oils, can clog the arteries and contribute to heart disease.
A traditional Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, stuffing, and other dishes and desserts can exceed 2,500 calories and 130 grams of fat. That's just for one meal and more than enough calories than you should consume in a whole day. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's recommended daily calorie intake ranges from 1,600 to 2,800 calories a day -- an entire day -- for teens and adults.
American adults usually gain 1 to 2 pounds each year, including slightly less than 1 pound during the holidays, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). That might not sound like much, but over time, the ever-increasing weight can increase your risk of serious health problems, such as diabetes, arthritis and cardiovascular disease.
About 97 million Americans -- more than half the population age 20 or older -- are overweight or obese, the NIH says. The number of Americans with diabetes has soared to 16 million, and the number of new cases is expected to continue climbing as Americans are getting heavier each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
There are ways to de-fat those holiday meals and still keep them delicious, according to Robin Vitetta-Miller, M.S., cookbook author and contributing editor to Cooking Light magazine. She suggests several strategies: trim the fat, think "substitute" and include a variety of fruits and vegetables.
Healthy eating and food preparation tips
Here are some ways to avoid packing on the pounds.
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Avoid stuffing yourself to a point where you feel uncomfortable. "It seems at Thanksgiving we have second helpings of everything, sometimes three times. Second and third helpings are not a requirement," says Kennedy, who has a doctorate in exercise science and is a former strength coach for the Penn State football team.
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If you're hosting a dinner, provide plenty of fluids, particularly water, for your guests. Start the meal with a salad and broth-based soup, which provide the portions that people like without high calories. These foods help you feel full but provide fewer calories than other dishes that have lots of calories in small portions, says Barbara Rolls, a nutrition professor at Penn State and author of the book Volumetrics.
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Gravy is one of the fattest offenders at the table. Two tablespoons of regular gravy made without de-fatting the drippings contain about 4 grams of fat (comparable to a teaspoon of margarine). Try pouring the meat drippings into a container and refrigerating it. The fat rises to the surface and is easy to peel off, she says. If you don't have the time, then use a paper towel to absorb the fat off the top.
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Eat the turkey, skip the skin. A 3-1/2 ounce serving of roast turkey breast with skin has 197 calories and 8.3 grams of fat; without skin, 157 calories and 3.2 grams of fat.
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Cook with less fat. Most dishes can be flavorful even if you cut the amount of butter, sugar and oil suggested in the recipe. And try offering low-fat desserts with fruit and whipped topping as an alternative to pies and cakes.
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Try adding nuts and fruits instead of sausage or turkey giblets in your stuffing, and use apples instead of sugar and butter to sweeten potatoes, the American Cancer Institute says.
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Make your stuffing a little less stuffy by cooking it outside the turkey for two reasons, Vitetta-Miller says. First, it's safer that way because the inside is cooked sufficiently to kill off salmonella bacteria, which turkeys can harbor. Second, cooking your stuffing or dressing outside the turkey avoids all of that extra fat.
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If you're baking sweet potatoes, leave out the butter. Try adding a little brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Bake them in a nonstick pan.
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Make a single-crusted pie instead of a double-crusted one. If you're buying refrigerated pie crusts, Vitetta-Miller suggests rolling them thinner and throwing away about an inch of the border. "A lot of fat in pumpkin pie is in the crust, so you will get rid of a lot of fat that way. If you're having pecan pie, which is loaded with fat, you might as well just eat it and take a run later," Vitetta-Miller says.
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Provide healthy snacks to your guests. A vegetable tray with a low-fat dip is a better choice than butter cookies. One butter cookie - just one - packs 130 calories.
Don't forget fruit and vegetables
Actually, pumpkin pie counts here. "Pumpkin pie is wonderful. It's loaded with beta carotene and vitamin C," Vitetta-Miller says.
Pumpkin, carrots and other orange vegetables, such as sweet potatoes, contain beta carotene, which is an orange pigment and a powerful antioxidant. Beta carotene is converted in the body to vitamin A. It is present in leafy green vegetables as well, but the green chlorophyll camouflages the orange pigment.
- Sweet potatoes, pumpkin, carrots, dried apricots, cantaloupe, winter squash, spinach and collard greens all pack beta carotene power.
- A slice of pumpkin or sweet potato pie can provide the same beta carotene as a carrot. It also can be laden with fat, Vitetta-Miller says. You can cut 90 percent of the fat by using evaporated skim milk or a nondairy creamer instead of condensed milk and by using egg substitute instead of eggs.
Vitetta-Miller serves up this final bit of advice on holiday cooking: "Don't starve yourself until dinner. Have breakfast so you don't load up at the big meal. Try a little bit of everything, go easy on the seconds, easy on desserts and take a walk after dinner."
This article was reviewed and updated June 2007.
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