Everyone loves a bit of an appetiser before the big event, but unfortunately you’re often not thinking when you start snacking on a bowl of crisps and dip, and suddenly your diet is out of the window. However, you can still offer fancy appetisers while taking care of your wellbeing, so let’s take a look at the worst snacks for your wellness, as well as a few healthy alternatives that will still impress everyone round the table.
1. Onion Blossom: While fried onions displayed in a nice ring certainly looks good, the only thing that will blossom will be your waistline. According to Joan Salge Blake, RD, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, ‘It’s good to start off with a vegetable, but once you fry it, you’re frying in calories.’ Instead, why not try vegetable kebabs? All you need to do is skewer your onions with red and green bell peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, and courgettes. Then, brush the kebabs with a garlic and herb marinade, and grill. Gorgeous and impressive appetisers with only 40 calories per kebab – what’s not to love?
2. Cheesy Chips: This is a favourite side dish whether you’re at home or eating out but Blake warns that appetisers like these can ‘take over the meal. Some of them have more calories than the main entrée.’ In fact, such an appetiser can contain up to 2,100 calories, 150g of fat, and a whole day’s worth of sodium (2,300 mg). Rather than wasting all your sinful calories on the side dish, Blake recommends using appetizers to work in healthy foods you might be eating too little of. If you don’t get enough seafood in your diet, seared crab cakes offer an appealing alternative to chips. Even with chilli sauce – which is absolutely divine – a typical crab cake has about 300 calories, 16g of fat, and 800 mg sodium.
3. Loaded Potato Skins: Again, with all the fat, salt and calories in this side dish, you can end up doubling the amount you’d eat in your mail meal. Blake cautions, ‘You’re taking a potato and adding saturated fats,’ which makes filled potato skins as fattening as they are tempting. If you can’t resist a potato skin, the trick to enjoying these is to have just one. However, you might be equally tempted by a similar, but healthier, side; stuffed mushrooms. Stuffing mushrooms instead of potato skins helps keep the portion size down, and cuts your calorie count down from 150 to 50 in each. You can still fill them up with cheese and bread crumbs, and even chow down half a dozen without damaging your diet – I’d call that a win.
4. Fried calamari: As we’ve covered, seafood is nutritious and including it in an appetiser can be a great way to get more of it in your diet. Although squid is more than qualified as a healthy inclusion in your diet, when you bread it and fry it in oil, you’re drenching it with calories and fat. Without sauce, a typical restaurant portion contains about 900 calories, 54g of fat, and 2,300mg of sodium. Therefore, you’re far better off going for a classic shrimp cocktail. Shrimp cocktail is very low in saturated fat and calories, as well as being a refreshing source of omega-3 fatty acids, which helps to promote healthy circulation. Whether you’re ordering it in a restaurant or making it yourself at home, the best way to keep your shrimp cocktail calorie count low – at 120 calories or so – is to stick to tomato-based sauce.