Just like reality TV, it’s the holiday foods smackdown

Everyone seems to like these food competition television reality shows, so how about we do a holiday foods smackdown of our own?Let’s start with appetizers. I used to love it when my mother made Lipton’s onion soup dip, dumping a package of salty-crunchy onions into a container of sour cream. She would always serve it with freshly cut vegetables, usually carrots and celery and radishes. As I grew into adulthood I began to feel that this dip must be very unhealthy, in addition to being old school. This week, preparing for a holiday cocktail party and for Thanksgiving, I looked online for recipes for my new favorite spinach/artichoke dip; and for a newer, Ina Garten version of the old onion dip. And I’m here to tell you that, comparatively, that Lipton soup mix is looking pretty healthy. It’s got a lot of salt, and I’m sure it’s full of chemicals. But the spinach dip and the Ina onion dip (and I love Ina) both have a combination of cream cheese, mayonnaise and sour cream. That’s a lot of fat. I’m feeling like maybe this year I go back to the instant soup aisle; I promise not to serve my dip with potato chips. If you’re worried about all the chemicals in the Lipton packet, then just caramelize some onions (cook them for a really long time in some butter; add some sugar) and add them to thick Greek yogurt or sour cream.Or you can go healthy and modern and serve a bowl of hummus with some cut-up vegetables (or crudites, if you prefer; almost all vegetables are delicious with hummus, including uncooked zucchini, red peppers and uncooked cauliflower). Speaking of cauliflower, you can steam a head of cauliflower and mash it and it’s delicious and is a good substitute for mashed regular potatoes. I’m not saying regular potatoes aren’t worth eating; they supply a lot of potassium, which I for one am always in need of. But people do reflexively dump gravy and butter and salt and pepper on their mashed potatoes. If you want to provide a similar experience, try serving mashed cauliflower. Shave some Parmesan cheese on top to make it creamier. Mashed turnips are good, too, albeit a little more tangy and sour. I love mashed potatoes, but for the holidays I always serve sweet potatoes, both roasted and served in their skins as well as roasted and then mashed (and yes, yes, OK, I put marshmallows on top).Nutritionally, sweet potatoes are a fantastic food to eat. They have lots of beta carotene, which is good for lots of things, including your eyesight. They have lots more vitamin C than white potatoes have and they have lots more calcium. But they also have more carbs and more sugar. The two kinds of potatoes have about equal amounts of fat. Cauliflower has less fat and carbohydrates than the potatoes, and much less sodium; but you get almost as much potassium from cauliflower as you do from white potatoes, and you get more vitamin C from the cauliflower. Turnips, too, have a lot less fat than potatoes, and lots and lots less sodium. They’re a little lower in potassium, but they still have 191 mg (compared to the 286 mg in the same size serving of white potatoes). Turnips have 25 percent of your daily requirement of vitamin C, so that’s good. I could go on, but you see where this is going; mashed potatoes are great and all, but there are some other good options out there. I found a great new tool on the Internet: Go to the Google search bar and type in “compare mashed potatoes and turnips” and you’ll get an informative and easy-to-read chart. You can compare sour cream and hummus. Hummus is made of crushed chickpeas and is really yummy; serve it garnished with a drizzle of olive oil and some coarse salt and freshly cracked pepper and maybe some chopped scallions. You’d think automatically the hummus would be much healthier, but wait. The sour cream has more going for it than you’d think. It’s higher in fat and calories than hummus but it’s way lower in sodium (80 mg for sour cream compared to 379 for hummus). The hummus has lots of potassium. The sour cream has tons and tons of vitamin A (12 percent of your daily recommended dose, versus zero from the hummus). The hummus doesn’t really have a lot of vitamins in it, which kind of surprised me. I was also surprised to see that the sour cream is pretty comparable, nutritionally, to Greek yogurt — except when it comes to fat, of course. In the end, the holidays are more about tradition than they are about trying to win the healthy eating sweepstakes. But if you have young children, perhaps it’s time to give them the gift of holiday eating traditions that are a little healthier. And when you define what’s “healthy,”think about what nutrients are most important to you and your family. Potassium is important to me. Maybe calcium is important to you.