Remaking Thanksgiving Menus
Despite its historical trappings, Thanksgiving, for most of us, is a holiday about food and family (and, often, the watching of televised sports). While it’s also a day for home cooks to show their stuff, the expectations of the people doing the eating are what shapes the menu, which may be why that menu doesn’t change much year after year. So how do you keep your family’s tradition going when you’re also trying to stay healthy? We’ve tinkered with some of the stalwarts of the Thanksgiving table, stripping out fat and carbs while keeping the customary flavors very much intact. Think of it as a much-needed makeover.
Rustic Mashed Potatoes With Olive Oil and Garlic
You’ll notice that these potatoes use no heavy cream—and, in fact, no dairy at all. Instead, their smoothness is the result of olive oil and some of the potatoes’ cooking liquid. Another update: Parmesan cheese. Since Parmesan is quite intense, only a little bit is needed to produce a lot of flavor, compared with a milder cheese.
Mashed Sweet Potatoes With Pineapple and Spices
First up: We cut way down on the butter, which you probably won’t even miss. That means a lot less unhealthy fat. And instead of the usual brown sugar, crushed pineapple adds plenty of sweetness, meaning we could skip the goopy melted marshmallows, too.
The star here is the whole wheat bread, far heartier than the usual white, and full of good fiber. Instead of being loaded with butter, this stuffing is held together by the addition of very hot broth, which the bread cubes soak up. Meanwhile, dried cranberries or cherries add color and zing.
Holiday Pumpkin Pie With Maple Ginger Crust
The secret is in the crust! Using graham-cracker crumbs instead of a traditional wheat flour means you need only add a teaspoon of canola oil rather than the typical heavy serving of butter or shortening. That saves you a lot of unwanted saturated fat. (The graham-cracker crust is a lot easier to make, too.) The filling for this pie is fairly traditional, save for the sugar substitute, which helps to cut its carbohydrate content.
Comments
Comments are subject to review and will not be posted immediately. If you have an urgent medical question, please consult a health care professional. If you have a question for the staff of Diabetes Forecast, please send it to replyall@diabetes.org.Love the substitutions!
Robyn, great job on coming up with some healthier (and in my opinion tastier) substitutions for Thanksgiving dinner.
Alysa Bajenaru, RD, CPT
http://inspiredrd.com
Diabetes-Friendly? No way!
All the carbs in these high GI recommendations will have every diabetic running for their insulin shots or Metaphrmin. Don't you know fats aren't the problem; carbs are the culprit. By replacing them with protein, fiber, and healthy fats there is often a reduction in calories that secondarily reduces weight and glucose spikes. So put some beautiful green veggies on that menu along with your turkey. Rethink this nonsense before unsuspecting diabetics collapse on thanksgiving Day.
Are you deliberately trying to make people sicker?
Good grief! Replacing healthy fats with SUGAR is a recipe for disaster.
Every "improved" item on that list is guaranteed to jack up blood sugar.
Shan
Wonderful suggestions. I look forward to trying them out!
Thanksgiving Dinner
Great recipe ideas Robyn. I also love using the potato cooking liquid for mashed potatoes and eliminating dairy. I began using this technique when I was teaching a class on how to save nutrients when cooking. The recipe is in my book Stress Free Cooking. I also add several cloves of garlic when cooking them. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Barbara Seelig-Brown, www.stressfreecooking.com
Eating out at Thanksgiving
Since you can't control the recipe, what are the food exchanges? Any portion advice ?
Great day to start your
Great day to start your training, for Tour de Cure.
2011 will be the 20th year, check your local area, and join or start Team Red, let's have Team Red @ every event this year
I'm going to try the
I'm going to try the stuffing and bring it to my clinic's potluck. Looks delicious!
xylitol
Is this a sugar sub>? If so what name brand do we find it under. If not is Splenda a good Sub. for sugar?
Way too many carbs
This is an appalling menu for diabetics. A single portion of each of the four sides shown above add up to 106 gm of carbohydrate, of which 48 gm is sugar (see table below).
ADA Sides
Carbs Fiber Sugar Side
46 gm 1 gm 32 gm Pumpkin Pie
28 gm 5 gm 7 gm Stuffing
16 gm 1 gm 1 gm Mashed potatoes
16 gm 2 gm 8 gm Mashed sweet potatoes
106 gm 9 gm 48 gm TOTAL
I am Type 2 diabetic. If I ate these sides - let alone the rest of Thanksgiving dinner - there would be a very large increase in my blood glucose. Because my cells are insulin-resistant, a huge increase in insulin would be released from my pancreas, contributing to beta cell burnout. Insulin acts not only to reduce blood glucose; it is the fat hormone. The large rise in insulin would cause my body to store fat and would lead to increases in triglycerides and LDL and reduced HDL. This would directly increase my risk of diabetic complications, as well as contribute to beta cell burnout.
Why don't ADA nutritionists understand this? Don't they know that you are not what you eat, but what you body does with what you eat?
Consider comparable low carb sides:
Carbs Fiber Sugar Side
10 gm 5 gm 4 gm Low carb crustless pumpkin pie
9 gm 4 gm Low carb stuffing (about.com)
3 gm 2 gm 1 gm Mashed cauliflower
5 gm 4 gm Low carb cranberry chutney
27 gm 15 gm 5 gm TOTAL
Net carbs are brought down to just 12 gm.
By generally limiting myself to no more than 12 gms per meal, I have been able to get off most meds and my metabolic profile is perfect (non-diabetic).
There is an excellent editorial about this menu at http://www.healthiertalk.com/adas-diabetes-thanksgiving-disaster-2864.
For a thanksgiving menu that will help rather than seriously harm diabetics, see http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/thanksgiving/a/thanksgivingdin.htm.
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