Do you have any other tips to make side dishes healthier?
Wood: Sweet potatoes are a great option. You can bake or purée them. We do a sweet potato crisp in my family with pecans on top, which is delicious. If you want to lightly sweeten it with maple syrup or honey and then put some nuts on top, that’s great. Nuts are a nutritional powerhouse.
For the classic green bean casserole, don’t use a can of store-bought cream of mushroom soup, which is loaded with sodium. Instead, take evaporated milk (which is thicker than normal milk and can be fat-free), thicken it with cornstarch, add in some roasted mushrooms, and season with plenty of black pepper. It’s lower in salt and calories, less processed, and super easy.
With Brussels sprouts, roast them or put them in your air fryer with a little bit of balsamic vinegar or maple syrup on top.
And then, I would say, serve a big salad. Salads take up a lot of room in your stomach. They take a long time to eat. So again, think about healthy things you can add to the table instead of trying to swap out your family favorites.
On to beverages. When it comes to alcohol, how much is enough?
Wood: A lot of people go awry with booze in the holiday season, whether it’s at a holiday work party, or the dinner table, or afterwards. We need to think about the alcohol choices we make and try to keep it to one drink a day for women or two for men. Limiting alcohol cuts back on that awful, bloated feeling and helps us keep better control over our eating habits.
Then think about the type of alcohol you drink. There’s a big difference between a big, heavy beer or a sugary cocktail compared to one nice ounce of bourbon by the fire or a glass of wine with dinner. Keep it light. For a bubbly treat, go for something like a prosecco brut, which is dry and low in sugar.
Which brings us to desserts and sweets.
Wood: They’re all delicious, but let’s face it, they’re also all loaded with sugar or cream or both.
How can we mitigate the damage?
Wood: Think about ways you can add whole fruits or vegetables into desserts. It’s a harm-reduction strategy. A chocolate pie won’t be as good for you as an apple pie. Or a pumpkin pie, which is a vegetable. That’s step one.
Step two is one of my favorite tips. When you’re baking, use white whole-wheat flour. Normal all-purpose flour is made from red wheat, and they refine it down, and it becomes all-purpose flour. It’s not great for us. Everyone’s had traditional whole-wheat flour, too, which is also made from red wheat. It’s dense and doesn’t bake very well and has a strong flavor. But there’s a separate variety of wheat called “white wheat.” It’s a whole-grain flour that’s very tender. It doesn’t have much flavor, so you can cook with it like all-purpose flour. And it’s 100% whole-grain. It offers a lot of extra fiber and extra nutrients.
Lastly, don’t forget the old tip of using applesauce to replace up to half the oil in a baking recipe. If you’re making a brownie mix or a cake mix from a box, it works really well. Another great, easy dessert go-to is angel food cake. It has sugar, but it’s fat-free and has some protein from the egg whites. And what do you put on top? Fruit. And then maybe just a little whipped cream and a touch of lime zest for pizzazz.
Finally, what about those salty snacks everyone loves before and after dinner?
Wood: Popcorn can be a good choice. You don’t have to buy the microwave bag with all the artificial stuff in it. You can pop it yourself in the microwave. And then spritz on avocado oil, or dredge in a little bit of butter or one of those healthy oils we talked about earlier. That way you control the level and quality of fat and salt.
People think of pretzels as healthy, but they’re basically just white flour and salt. Opt instead for a baked chip or a corn tortilla chip, which is a whole grain. You can cut fat and salt by making your own in the air fryer or oven with just some oil and corn tortillas. Add salsa or guacamole, both very healthy, fiber- and antioxidant-rich options.
Nuts are another good option, especially if you crack them yourself. I think people like to sit around the fire and crack nuts and chat. And when you go through all the effort to crack and peel them, you end up eating less overall compared to just taking a couple of big handfuls. Nuts and seeds are super health-promoting, and none of us eat enough of them.
Download a printable PDF of Nate Wood’s healthier eating strategies and swaps.
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