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The Five Most Fattening Holiday Appetizers

It's not just the cold temperatures that get you eating more in the winter, it's all the food-laden festivities. Here are some calorific grazing items you might want to avoid.

 

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Ah, December, the season when homemade cookies magically appear on conference room tables and any trip down a corridor can end in a small, fattening wine-and-cheese party. Ensuring you don't look like Santa by January can require a special discipline. Holiday-party appetizer grazing—that is, eating while standing up or distracted, or when you're sitting too close to the snack bowl—can result in some truly diet-busting calorie consumption. After all, who ever ate just one pig in a blanket?

Here are five of the worst party food offenders. Their calorie counts are enough to make you run to the crudités plate. (For more eating habits to avoid, check out our story on the worst ways to gnosh.

Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp Yes, grilled or boiled shrimp is low-fat, but when it's wrapped in bacon (and sometimes drizzled first in sauce), the calories can climb to more than 100 per morsel, including at least 8 grams of fat.

Pigs in Blankets The quintessential '50s hors d'oeuvre—with at least 80 calories and 5 grams of fat per pig—never went away. How could it? Don't pretend you've never stalked the waiter with the tray. Keep it down to two or fewer of these little morsels or you could find yourself ingesting a meal's worth of calories in a few fleeting bites.

Mini-quiches This fork-size version of a ladies-lunch favorite can be deceptive. Keep in mind there's typically bacon or ham along with the cheese. Mini-quiches start at 7 grams of fat and 90 calories each.

Sliders The latest thing in party food, these mini-cheeseburgers have the advantage of built-in portion control. If you manage to stick to one, you've consumed only about 120 calories and 8 grams of fat. But can you stick to just one?

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Member Comments

  • Posted By: lildiamond @ 11/23/2008 2:34:29 PM

    Geez, I hope the poster "Highsteaks" reads a peer reviewed medical journal about the risks of eating high fat diets. Yes cutting carbs will cause a temporary weight loss. Eating 60+ grams of fat (I am assuming this person means saturated fat) will cause irreparable damage to the cardiovascular system. Fat is needed by the body in very low amounts; American are fat because of overprocessed foods, to much meat and cheese (saturated fats) and copious amounts of sugar.

    Ever wonder why high fat diets are proven risk factors for stroke, heart attack, impotence and obesity?? Eating an excess of any high fat food will lead to weight gain. Duh...!

  • Posted By: carolmarol567 @ 12/23/2007 5:59:40 PM

    This is so weird.... That people actually have the time to post all this commentary.....Have a good time, eat sensibly, have sex with your spouse, relax and eat a few noshes...Just like chill out people! Man!

  • Posted By: highsteaks @ 12/16/2007 10:01:44 AM

    Do people really still think eating fat makes you fat? Does this writer have no understanding of basic physiology?

    I eat 60+g of fat per day and I'm losing weight at a rate of 1-2lbs per day. Eating processed carbs and sugar is what's made America obese, not fat.

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