Everyone knows that Thanksgiving is the worst eating day for everyone in the US. Anyone that is on a “Diet” is either going to blow it or will have to use every ounce of unnatural will power to not give in to the Holiday’s tradition of stuffing your face until you can’t move. Even more specifically for us Texans, stuffing your face until you can’t move and waddling into your relative host’s living room to watch the Cowboys.
So, Thanksgiving stands accused as the least healthy holiday. Like your mother used to say, “Don’t hang out with the wrong crowd.” Thanksgiving, as far as its effect on health, is just another day in November, it’s just guilty by association. More specifically, its association with food, lots of food! Well, this is a free country, we are free to do, or eat what we want, and we are innocent until proven guilty. So let’s give Thanksgiving a fair trial and see what our final verdict is.
First up, I’d like to call to the stand, Turkey, the main character in the Thanksgiving feast.
5 ounces of white mean Turkey: Total Fat: 11.7g Saturated Fat: 3.2 Trans Fat: 0 Cholesterol: 107.6mg Sodium: 89.2mg Carbs: 0 Protein :40.4g
Well, it looks like Turkey has a little fat, but not saturated or trans fat, but healthy unsaturated fats. It has relatively small amounts of cholesterol, sodium and no carbs. It is loaded with protein. Protein from turkey is an excellent source because it is a complete protein with all of the necessary amino acids. It appears that turkey is not only not bad for you, but actually healthy. The Verdict: Turkey is innocent.
Now for Sweet Potatoes.
Sweet Potatoes, Dark Orange, Fresh, 5″ long, Total Fat: .1g Cholesterol: 0mg Sodium: 71.5mg Carbs: 26.2g Protein: 2g
It seems that sweet potatoes are fat free and cholesterol free. They are nearly free of sodium as well as protein. This vegetable, or root, has good carbs as well. These good carbs are complex, which means your body breaks them down slowly providing you with energy over time, instead of going straight to your hips or stomach as fat. It would appear that sweet potatoes are innocent also.
Now let’s look at canned, sweetened cranberry sauce.
Cranberry Sauce, Sweetened and Canned, 3 slices: Total Fat: .3g Cholesterol: 0mg Sodium: 49.6mg Carbs: 66.5g Sugars- 64.5.g Protein: .3g
Cranberry Sauce has no fat (the FDA allows foods to be called “NO FAT, Preservatives, Trans Fat as long as each serving has less than .5g of fat. Don’t be fooled thinking you aren’t eating fat, first look at how many servings you are eating, then multiply it by .49 and that’s how many actual grams of fat you just ate, FYI). It has no cholesterol, and the salt content of two saltine crackers, not bad. The bad part is, it has 66.5 grams of carbs, and 64.5 of those is sugar! Measure 65 grams of sugar in a measuring cup, now imagine that pile of sugar being added directly to your waistline, because that’s what happens when you eat 64.5g of sugar, unless you are currently running a marathon, and a sprint to the dessert line does not qualify as a marathon. The verdict: Guilty! Canned cranberry sauce is guilty of having way to much sugar and adding padding!
Next on the stand is Stuffing:
Stuffing, bread, prep/dry mix 1/2cup Total Fat: 8.6g Saturated Fat: 1.7g Cholesterol: 0mg Sodium: 543mg Carbs: 21.7g Sugars: 2.1g Protein: 3.2g
Well, stuffing has a small amount of fat, but not bad fat. There is a limited amount of cholesterol and protein, but tons of sodium as with most boxed or canned foods. It has a little bit of carbs from the white bread mix, but it’s not from sugar and actually has less carbs than a can of soda, so it seems like stuffing is innocent.
I’ve seen all I need. We have learned that turkey is actually healthy, canned cranberries are loaded with sugar, sweet potatoes are great, and stuffing isn’t healthy, but isn’t that bad either.
So, is Thanksgiving innocent or guilty? It’s innocent. Think about it, if we eat a serving of turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberries (not the canned sugary kind), and stuffing, we actually have a pretty healthy meal made of real, natural food. For some, it would be the healthiest meal they have eaten in a while.
So if Thanksgiving dinner is basically a healthy meal, who is guilty?
No matter what you eat, whether it’s turkey or a hamburger, if you eat too much you will gain weight. If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight.
So what’s the problem with Thanksgiving? We overeat. Not only do we overeat on healthy real food, but we gorge ourselves on desserts. I’m not even going to go there, we all know what we should and shouldn’t be eating when it comes to dessert.
Give Thanksgiving a break, and get real. Instead of stuffing ourselves with more turkey, we know when to stop and have enough will power to do it. Let’s enjoy our time together and give thanks for a full table, and a reasonably full stomach and refrigerator.
Have A Happy Thanksgiving.
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