It Is Okay to Pass on This Thanksgiving Food

Thanksgiving is the best holiday for food as you can eat so many great dishes all at the same time. From turkey to stuffing to sweet potato casseroles, some dishes just seem like Thanksgiving food. 

However, you’ll be surprised to learn that some of these dishes you should pass on. Sure they might look innocent and taste delicious, but you have no idea what they actually contain.

We’ve researched popular Thanksgiving food to find the culprits that make you gain 5 lbs after the holiday. Up next are five Thanksgiving dishes you should pass on.

Canned Cranberry Sauce

There is something about 21 grams of sugar coagulated into a can that is a bit of a turn off.  It’s a gritty gel at best, tarnishing juicy slices of turkey and soft rolls of dinner.

At worst, a jiggling show of canned food from the 1950s has gone wrong. In 1912, in Hanson, Massachusetts, cranberry sauce was first sold to customers in North America.

In 1941, canned cranberry sauce appeared on the market, making it possible to sell the food year-round. A variety of meats, including turkey, pork, chicken, and ham, are often served with a big dollop of canned cranberry sauce.

You can easily forego that sip of sugar or if you must have cranberry sauce, at least make your own.

Green Bean Casserole

When you add heavy cream, fried onions, and cheese to anything, you know it’s full of fat. So even though green beans are nutritious, when those things are added they become one of the most caloric things on the Thanksgiving table. 

Dorcas Reilly at the Campbell Soup Company produced the recipe in 1955. The original recipe consisted mainly of green beans, mushroom soup, and french fried onions.

Anyone who thought of mixing frozen green beans with canned cream of mushroom must’ve been having an off day. The inclusion of canned fried onions does not support its case either.

Do it right if you are going to have this recipe, and use absolutely fresh ingredients. Too much of a job? Leave the casserole off your table and instead sauté fresh verts of haricot.

Caramelized Sweet Potatoes

It’s irreverent to add extra sugar to nature’s sweets when it ends in this syrupy mess. And a mess is what we have with caramelized sweet potatoes.

You have to cook the potatoes first before “caramelizing” them with a puzzling mixture of brown sugar and orange juice. Which means they take extra long to prepare. You can save on all that sugar and time with baked potatoes.

Candied sweet potato dishes may have originated in Europe in the 16th century. Still, candied yams are mostly from the American south.

There have been many sweet potato recipes discovered that date back to the 1800s and early 1900s like “A Sweet Potato History.” 

Corn Pudding

It can be delicious to have the perfect corn pudding, but let’s face it, having the right texture is hard to pull off. You may be going to end up with something either too gelatinous or too runny. And this dish too is full of sugar.

Since cooking a variety of foods all day is already busy, save your energy for another dish. The mixture of maize and beans, Succotash, has all but disappeared from the American culinary lexicon.

But the soft, creamy corn pudding with its simple taste has continued to charm generations around the Thanksgiving table. From its inception, corn pudding was a modest meal, said author and food historian Betty Fussell.

Pecan Pie

If it tastes overly decadent to pecan pie, that’s because it is. Pecan pie is a highly concentrated sugar and calories source. It is typically made with a generous quantity of sugar and corn syrup.

There are about 500 calories in an average one-eighth slice of a 9-inch pecan pie.  No one should ask you to forget about this special day’s dessert – we definitely won’t.

Rather, it’s about making picks that at the same time are satisfying, sweet, and maybe offer a bit of nutritional value. Pecan pie is a favorite in the Southern United States during the holidays and through the year.

Pecans grow in southern states such as Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Arizona which explains the popularity. The roots of the pie date back to the late 1800s, although some proof also shows that it may have been invented much earlier.

Image Source: Eat This, Not That

Conclusion

The 1621 feast between the pilgrims and the Wampanoag in the Plymouth Colony included waterfowl, venison, lobster, clams, berries, fruit, pumpkin, and squash. That’s according to what is historically known as The First Thanksgiving.

The above recipes crept onto the Thanksgiving table quite sometime after that. If you care about your waistline and want to keep things natural like the original Thanksgiving, you might want to pass on those recipes.