Holiday Treats: The Naughty and Nice

Brittany LaPlume
Special to the Critic

How to avoid packing on extra pounds over the holidays.

With the holiday seasons approaching, many of us have been hitting the gym and watching what we’re eating hoping to avoid gaining those extra pounds.

This is great! But how will you hold up when the tantalizing fragrance of spices, pumpkin and flaky, buttery pie crust wafts through the air as Mom bakes her famous pumpkin pie? There goes all your self-control right out the window.

Good news, you don’t need to give up all your favorite treats this holiday season. Here are some tips and tricks to help you figure out which of your favorites belong on the Nice List and which are banned to the Naughty List.

The first thing you need to learn about is fats. There are four kinds of fats: monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, saturated fats and trans fats. If your favorite has only monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats then put them right on the Nice list. Monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are the good ones. If your treat only has saturated fat, be careful. Some saturated fat is okay, but too much of a good thing can be bad. Now, foods which contain trans fats go straight to the Naughty List. Watch out for those trans fats that come from partial hydrogenation of vegetable oil.

How will you know if your favorite holiday snack contains trans fat? Just look at the ingredients. If the ingredients have “partially hydrogenated” anywhere in it kiss that treat good bye. It is officially on the Naughty List.

Luckily many companies have done us the favor of labeling their foods with visible “0g trans fat” signs right on their packaging. Careful though, it turns out that even with those labels the foods that claim to have 0 grams of trans fat can actually have up to 0.4 g of trans fat per serving.

While that small amount does not seem like a big deal think of how many servings of those foods you might eat in a day or even a week. That’s when the grams of trans fat begin to add up. To determine if the food really is trans fat free, just check the ingredients and look for that two-word warning, partially hydrogenated.

So why are trans fats so bad? They can be dangerous to your health. A 1% increase in your daily calorie intake of trans fats increases your chances of developing coronary artery disease by 50%!

Those are scary numbers, especially around the holiday season when it’s so tempting to eat all those foods that are loaded with trans fats.

Because of this huge risk, some places, like the state of California, have completely banned the use of trans fat in prepared food. This means that if you eat at a restaurant, bar or snack shack in CA, you’ll never have to worry about trans fats.
Now let’s go over the Naughty and Nice Lists:

Nice List
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Turkey (no skin)
Twizzlers
Cranberry Sauce
Squash
Hard Candies
Candy Apples
Dark Chocolate
Oreos
Naughty List
Snickers – 0.2 g trans fat
Sarah Lee Pumpkin Pie – 7 g trans fat
Mrs. Smith’s Apple Pie – 4 g trans fat
Caramel Popcorn Balls – 3.7 g trans fat
Ritz Crackers – Contains Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil
Pillsbury Rolls – 3.2 g trans fat
Pillsbury Cinnamon Buns – 2.0 g trans fat
Some alternatives to those Naughty List items:

Pumpkin and Apple Pie – Make a homemade pumpkin pie and find a recipe that does not have shortening in the pie crust. If the recipe calls for margarine, see if you can substitute oil.
Rolls and Cinnamon Buns – Make homemade rolls and cinnamon buns with a recipe that calls for oil.

So now that you have your Naughty and Nice Lists, enjoy this holiday season, but don’t go overboard with the foods on the Nice List. Remember, there can be too much of a good thing. Happy Holidays from the Exercise Science Department!