How to eat healthy during the holidays is an important consideration for seniors, and no doubt you’ll be baking up those special treats for your family and grandchildren. Christmas cookies, however, are filled with sugar and fat. Not only are they not healthy for your grandchildren, but they are not particularly great for senior nutrition, either. Rather than indulging in traditional cookies and treats, why not consider these potentially healthier alternatives to Christmas cookies instead.
Healthier Alternatives To Traditional Christmas Cookies
Dark Chocolate Peppermint Truffles
These fudgy, rich balls are dairy-free and taste heavenly. They contain only four ingredients—applesauce, cocoa powder, peppermint extract, and honey—which you may already have in your kitchen. There is no need for melted chocolate or heavy cream in these delicious treats!
Now, you can't taste the applesauce in these. It's only combined with the honey to hold the truffles together. It also makes the truffles a little sweeter. All you taste is delicious dark chocolate and peppermint in these truffles.
Reindeer Snack
This is a cute food arrangement for your grandchildren (but you can indulge in these healthy treats, too). Use your imagination to simply cut and arrange a soft cereal bar into different sized squares and rectangles to form the reindeer's head, body, and legs. Apple slices with notches form the antlers, and raisins are used for eyes. See this cute reindeer snack here. For a little more detail, add a small apple slice for the muzzle topped with raisins for nostrils. He may be too adorable to eat!
Chocolate Dipped Clementines
Another traditional Christmas treat are clementines. You can grab a bag of clementines at your local organic grocery store or farmer's market. Just cut up your clementines and dip them into melted dark chocolate. Sprinkle on some sea salt and your tasty treat is complete.
Fruit Kebabs
This is a very easy holiday treat to add to your healthy diet. Grab some apple slices, orange slices, melon chunks, banana slices, and grapes and thread them on skewers. Rolling the fruit-filled skewers in an icing sugar is strictly optional!
Flavored Popcorn
Pop up some popcorn kernels and add your own low fat flavoring. Rather than using butter, pop the corn in canola oil instead. To flavor it, add in some cinnamon-sugar and a little maple syrup for a perfect holiday combination.
Whole-Wheat Sugar Cookies
You don't have to take all the fun (or the flavor) out of baking Christmas cookies. Consider making a few substitutions to reduce a bit of the sugar and fat. This is a tasty recipe for whole-wheat sugar cookies you can try which may be lower in cholesterol and saturated fat than your traditional recipe. Make it a fun experiment to try to find even healthier substitutions that still taste great.
As you age, your metabolism naturally begins to slow down, and this makes it more difficult to keep the holiday pounds off. Plus, with the added fat and cholesterol that many Christmas cookies and other goodies have in them, it can cause potential health issues in older adults like increased blood pressure, high cholesterol, and inflamed joints.
Keep your body feeling great during the holidays with your own healthy alternatives to Christmas cookies and holiday treats.
