Why You Should Stay Away From These Christmas Goodies
By: Shamar M
Tags: Weight Loss, Diet, Food, Christmas, Foodies

Mince Pies

Photo by Marina Hannah on Unsplash

I’ll start with one of the most popular foods, mince pies. I used to love these, until about three years ago I read the packaging on a pack of six and found that there’s around 390 calories in one of these bad boys which makes it 13% of your daily fat intake.

You can admit it right now that one is never enough. They’re tiny, I used to have two at a time.

The mini mince pies? 84 calories and 4% of your daily fat intake. Not too bad for a Christmas treat, but I don’t advise you make it a daily habit for the entire holidays.

Pigs in Blankets

I couldn’t find an image through Medium, but these are the teeny tiny sausauges wrapped in a little bit of bacon. I’m 90% sure you know what I’m talking about.

My mouth is watering at the thought of these, they’re really bloody good and I very rarely eat pork.

What’s not so good, is that one little piggy is worth 59 calories but 8% of your daily fat intake. If you’re having Christmas dinner and end up with six of these on your plate, that’s 354 calories and 48% of your daily fat intake. Remember, meat itself can be very fatty and the bacon will more than likely still have the fat on it.

Christmas Pudding

Photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash

A Christmas pudding is around 400g. One quarter, so 100g is 301 calories and 8% of your daily fat intake.

But no one has a plain Jane Christmas pudding, I bet you add hot sauce to it. Or ice cream. Think about how many calores are in those already and how much there is now in your bowl of Christmas goodies.

Heroes

In Great Britain, which has never been Great and will never be, we have a huge tradition of eating a light-blue tub of chocolates called Heroes. These are an assortment of Britain’s favourite bite-sized chocolates.

Bite-sized, but not innocent at all. Let’s take a Cadbury’s Twirl chocolate bar for example. An entire bar is 114 calories. A bit-sized Twirl? 44 calories a piece. Doesn’t sound fair, does it?

The rest of the chocolate assortments in the tub will probably also be around 50 calories a piece. So if you’re that person who cracks open a tub and eats the lot, don’t step on the scales for a while.

Celebrations

We also have a similar tub called Celebrations. But what are you celebrating if you’re just eating a ton of calories?

A Snickers, a Malteaser (my favourite), a Bounty or a Milkyway bar. Doesn’t matter. They also come around 50 calories a piece.

Side note: I was in serious shock when I read this about Heros and Celebrations. Surely it’s 50 calories for two at minimum? Guess not…

Salted Peanuts

Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash

If you’re allergic to peanuts, count your blessings. These tiny, popular Christmas snacks can be 608 calories for only a 50g serving with 51% of your daily food intake.

Due to the salt content, these are extremely moorish. You really need to think about it at this point, over half of your daily food intake along with all the other junk you’re eating, is it worth it?

Pringles

Photo by Arnold Antoo on Unsplash

Another mandatory Christmas snack (I eat these throughout the year anyway). This is one company that rebrands their packaging for Christmas and it really annoys me, it’s such a waste of cardboard and plastic.

279 calories for a 50g serving. However, the Pringles company motto is “Once you pop, you can’t stop” due to the amount of addictives they know that are in one tube. So if you do end up eating a whole tube to yourself because most folks do, that’s 1,116 calories.