Thanksgiving Dinner: Healthy Side Dishes for Special Diets

Thanksgiving dinner is one of the most important meals of the year. The trouble is, it's hard to please everybody around the table. You may discover shortly before, or worse yet, on Thanksgiving day that your mother's on a low fat diet, your sister's on a low carb diet, your nephew's diabetic and one of your guests is a vegetarian. A wide array of different side dishes can solve this problem, and make your Thanksgiving dinner complete for everyone on your guest list. Your Thanksgiving side dishes can be healthy for all of your guests and still be delicious.

However, many special diets have their pitfalls. Low fat diets often don't take into account the carbohydrate content of the meals. Therefore many people on low fat diets go crazy eating lots of sugar, white flour and and other empty carbs. Similarly, the popular low carb diets ignore saturated fat, tending to load it on with a trowel. There is some confusion about what constitutes a vegetarian dish, and some people go overboard. Vegetarians don't only eat salad and veggies, and they often find that the offerings given by well-meaning meat eaters are inadequate. Most people also don't seem to be aware that there are different types of vegetarians. Lacto-ovo vegetarians can eat dairy products and eggs, whereas only vegans are the strictest types of vegetarians who eat only plant-based foods.

Many people suffer from the misconception that diabetics absolutely can't have anything sweet at all, when in fact most diabetics can have fruit sweetened dishes. Also, it's a common misconception that large quantities of foods high in saturated fat, such as butter, are fine for diabetics. However, studies have shown that diabetics are at greater risk for heart disease than the rest of the population. Be sure to check ahead of time with your diabetic guest to see what they are allowed to have.

It doesn't have to be this way. You can easily make a low carb Thanksgiving side dish low fat, and vice versa. Many of the low carb dishes will also do well for diabetics. All of the above also do well as vegetarian side dishes. All of the following Thanksgiving recipes are vegetarian.