So, What's In Your Fridge This Christmas?

If you open the average person’s fridge sometime between December 1st and January 7th, you could be forgiven for thinking you were opening the door to an industrial refrigerator in the world’s unhealthiest restaurant. Either that, or it looks like an explosion in a chocolate, cheese and pie factory.

Generally, you’re hard pushed to find anyone who keeps a healthy fridge over Christmas. Even those people who are usually pretty healthy push their bags of salad, boxes of fruit and packages of chicken and turkey breast to the back of the fridge to make room for the most calorie-laden foods on the planet.

One main issue is simply just the quantity of food people buy over Christmas. Everyone seems to prepare for the world and his wife coming round, and we can’t be seen to be ill-prepared, should distant relatives call in for a visit, or friends stop by on their way off to a party and expect to be treated to a pre-drinking snack.

Most people know what’s good and what isn’t, but by delving into the good and bad of Christmas foods, it may help you make wiser choices this holiday season. Let’s kick off with the bad.

Cranberry Sauce

Sounds healthy right? Cranberries are a fruit after all.

Not so fast. Have you ever tasted cranberries? They’re possibly the most bitter food known to man, yet cranberry sauce is incredibly sweet. Unfortunately, that sweetness is created by mountains of sugar. Just a teaspoon of your regular cranberry sauce can contain up to 5 grams of sugar.

Mince Pies

With pastry and sugar all in one tiny package, you’re looking at a pretty unhealthy food. While they do contain fruit, mince pies are generally full of raisins, currants and other dried fruits. The problem with dried fruit is that all the water has been removed, and you’re left with the most sugary part, making dried fruit a complete dieting no-non.

The one thing mince pies do have going for them is that they’re usually pretty small. Though on the downside that makes it pretty easy to eat a lot of them.

Christmas Cake

Anything with “cake” in its name is never going to be healthy. Just like mince pies and cranberry jelly, traditional Christmas cake is laced with sugar, but it is also topped with the dreaded icing – every dieter’s worst nightmare. Avoid this holiday diet-wrecker completely if you can.

Roast Potatoes

Many people will try to claim potatoes as a vegetable to make themselves seem healthier, but in reality, potatoes are far closer to a starch, like rice, bread or pasta, than one of their greener cousins. Potatoes are incredibly high in carbohydrates, making them a food to watch out for on any diet under normal circumstances, but when done in traditional Christmas style – ie. roasted in plenty of fat, they’re even worse.

Don’t try to make them healthier with vegetable oil either. While the name may suggest vegetable oil is a healthier alternative, it’s absolutely not. You use the same amount of oil as you would anyway, meaning the calories are the same, but vegetable oil is full of polyunsaturated fats. The typical Western diet is far too high in polyunsaturates as it is, and an excess of these can lead to atherosclerosis and increases inflammation. Stick to animal fat for your potatoes – you won’t save any calories, but you will do your ticker a favor.

Candy

Every household in the country has tins of candy adorning every room over Christmas. While individual sweets may be so small they don’t cause much damage, you can easily get through a whole tin throughout December, and often eat them without even realizing it.

Key tip – don’t keep boxes of sweets open and on display at all.

Christmas Dieting Saviors

It’s not all doom and gloom. Amongst the many potential dieting saboteurs over Christmas, there is the odd hidden gem that helps you get through the holiday period with your sanity intact and your body-fat at the same level it was back in the Autumn.

Turkey

It wouldn’t be Christmas without turkey. Fortunately, turkey is chocked full of metabolism-boosting, muscle-repairing protein. It’s a lot leaner, than red meat, so lower in calories too. Stick to mainly breast meat, with the odd higher calorie leg or wing thrown in. Cook a big turkey and keep some cold to get you through to the New Year.

Ham

Who doesn’t love a big cooked ham over Christmas? While ham can be slightly higher in salt than you’d like, it’s still a fantastic protein source and can help relieve the drudgery of the never-ending turkey.

People often cook their ham in cola or with a honey glaze to add sweetness, but you’re better off boiling or slow roasting it as it is to keep the calorie count down, then adding condiments such as mustard or low-sugar chutney after cooking.

Sweet Potatoes

Instead of your usual high-carb, fast-digesting, nutrient-deficient white potatoes, switch over to the sweet variety. They’re not actually any lower in carbs, but they’re much higher in vitamins and minerals. Plus, they taste so much better. You don’t need to add a ton of fat or flavoring to them – just boil and mash, or roast them in the oven with a dash of olive or coconut oil, salt and pepper and spices such as cinnamon, cayenne or cumin.

Fruit

It may be a bit old fashioned to give satsumas and clementines as stocking fillers, but they’re much healthier than candy, chocolate and sweets. Citrus fruits fare pretty well on the sugar scale, so fill your fruit bowl over Christmas to give you that sweet craving-buster and help you avoid the usual temptations.

Vegetables

This one had to be coming. Christmas is the one time of year when people actually seem to go out of their way to eat vegetables, so we may as well make the most of it.

When it comes to vegetables, you pretty much can’t go wrong with anything green – broccoli, green beans, cabbage, peas, cauliflower and even the dreaded Brussels sprouts are all great additions to your dinner plate.

You don’t have to complete avoid all your favorite foods and traditional holiday treats over Christmas, but it is all about moderation and planning. Stick to your regular diet as much as possible, and make sure you do have healthy options in your fridge, so you don’t end up with huge cravings for calorie-laden junk foods.