17 Healthy Christmas Appetizers That Still Feel Festive

You already know how this goes. The deviled egg plate empties first, before the wings, before the dip, sometimes before the last coat is off.

"I have literally never seen a party where there are any leftover deviled eggs." A party guest and home cook, on r/Cooking

The good news is that the egg itself does most of the work. A large egg has about 72 calories and 6 grams of protein, according to USDA figures reported by TODAY. That makes each unfilled half roughly 36 calories, 3 grams of protein and under a gram of saturated fat. Dietitian Grace Derocha points out that in the whites "you'll find a huge amount of protein with minimal calories and virtually no fat."

The filling is where things drift. A dietitian-reviewed version from HealtheCooks swaps the mayonnaise for nonfat plain Greek yogurt: 1/3 cup for 8 eggs. Two halves come to 78 calories and 7 grams of protein.

In my experience, yogurt filling needs a little help to keep its pop. Add a bit more mustard than you'd use with mayo, plus something sharp like a spoonful of pickle brine. Then go Christmas with the top: paprika for red, snipped chives for green.

This is a true make-ahead appetizer, with one catch. Food Network Kitchen says you can make the whites and filling up to 2 days ahead, stored separately, and assemble no more than a day before. The yogurt filling can weep in the fridge, so pipe it as late as you can.

Suits guests who skip meat, and gluten-free guests if your add-ins are. Not for anyone allergic to eggs.

Two bags of cooked shrimp can look identical at the store and carry more than eight times the sodium. It comes down to what's been added to keep them plump.

By USDA's figures, 3 ounces of cooked shrimp that was never frozen has about 94 milligrams of sodium. Shrimp that may contain moisture-retaining additives comes to about 805. The protein is nearly the same. You're paying for salt water.

That ingredient isn't hypothetical. One frozen cooked shrimp in USDA's branded database lists 800 mg of sodium per 3 ounces, with "sodium tripolyphosphate (added to retain moisture)" printed right there.

Here's the part that changed how I shop. When seafood researchers Laura Garrido and Steve Otwell tested shrimp samples, only 31% reported their sodium accurately, and 53% underreported it. So trust the ingredient list over the sodium number. The bag you want says shrimp, and not much else.

Cooking your own is easy and keeps them tender. Cook's Country heats the shrimp gently until the water hits 170 degrees and they're just turning pink, 5 to 7 minutes, then stirs ice into the pot. Brad, a test kitchen cook at Bon Appétit, swears by the thermometer. Taking the temperature of the poaching liquid is the easiest way he knows to tell the shrimp are done, he says. The FDA's test is flesh that's firm, pearly and opaque.

Then the sauce. Heinz Original Cocktail Sauce has 650 mg of sodium and 14 grams of sugar per quarter cup. Set it out in small cups instead of a big bowl and nobody drowns a shrimp in it.

As a make-ahead appetizer, it's hard to beat. "Get it all ready a couple hours before, throw a little plastic wrap over it and you're good to go," Brad says. Cooked shrimp keeps in the fridge for up to 2 days, and if the platter will sit out longer than 2 hours, the FDA says serve it on ice.

Pork-free, gluten-free and dairy-free. Not for anyone allergic to shellfish.

Put this one by the door, where people land with an empty plate and an appetite.

That's the idea behind advice from Tonya Turner, a registered dietitian at the Medical University of South Carolina's Weight Management Center: at holiday meals, fill your plate with fruits and vegetables first, low-calorie choices that are high in vitamins and minerals. For anyone who shows up hungry, this is where I'd start.

The tree itself is simple. Broccoli florets make the branches. Red pepper strips run across as garland. Cauliflower makes snow at the base, and a yellow pepper star goes on top.

The two main players aren't equals, and the difference surprised me:

That red garland carries about three and a half times the vitamin C of the green tree, at 39 calories a cup. Be generous with it.

Mixing colors pays off for its own reasons. Harvard Health suggests picking from five color groups: purple and blue, green, orange and yellow, red, and white. "Eat all of the colors of the rainbow," says Dr. Michelle Hauser, a Harvard Medical School clinical fellow and certified chef. Purple cauliflower or a few radishes cover the color you're missing.

Brie gets blamed for more than it's done. Per ounce, it has about the same saturated fat as cheddar or Swiss, Harvard Health notes. "It's reassuring news for cheese lovers," says Emily Gelsomin, a senior clinical nutritionist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

What actually matters is how much ends up on the board. Penn State Extension's rule is one serving: 1½ ounces of natural cheese. For eight guests, that's 12 ounces of cheese on the whole board. Most of us buy twice that and then wonder where the evening went.

Here's how common board cheeses compare, per ounce, from Penn State's figures:

The saturated fat barely moves. The sodium swings more than sevenfold, with Swiss as the low sodium pick and Parmesan at the far end. Strong cheeses like blue and Parmesan are "often used more sparingly," as Harvard puts it, and that's the trick: crumble them small and you need less.

Cut the cheese into bite-size pieces before guests arrive. A wedge with a knife invites sawing. A little pile of cubes looks like plenty.

One check for soft cheeses: the CDC advises adults 65 and older to skip soft cheese made from unpasteurized milk, naming brie, camembert and blue-veined cheese. Make sure the label says pasteurized.

Spread hummus in a thick ring on a round platter, press halved cherry tomatoes into it, and tuck rosemary sprigs around the edge. It looks like a wreath from across the room, and it takes ten minutes.

A store tub is a fine shortcut. One common example, Sabra Classic, has 70 calories, 1 gram of saturated fat, 130 mg of sodium and 2 grams each of fiber and protein per 2 tablespoons. It's labeled vegan. Brands differ more than you'd guess, so compare a couple: Pita Pal Original has half the sodium, 65 mg for the same 2 tablespoons, Consumer Reports found.

Now the part almost nobody thinks about. Hummus is built on tahini, which is ground sesame, and sesame joined the FDA's list of nine major food allergens on January 1, 2023. A guest who knows to ask about peanuts may not think to ask about a bean dip. The International Food Information Council's advice to hosts is blunt: "State even the obvious ingredients, even sesame."

Serve it with vegetables instead of pita and it skips the wheat, too.

This is the easiest swap at the party, and the numbers are lopsided.

• Sour cream, 2 tablespoons: about 62 calories and 3.75 grams of saturated fat
• Nonfat Greek yogurt, 2 tablespoons: 18 calories, 3 grams of protein, no saturated fat

For scale, the American Heart Association suggests keeping saturated fat to about 13 grams a day on a 2,000-calorie diet. One generous scoop of a sour cream dip uses more than a quarter of that before the chips arrive.

A Greek yogurt dip also gets better while it waits. Carla Due, a University of Arkansas Extension agent, says dips and spreads often improve when stored in the refrigerator two or three days before serving. That makes it a make-ahead appetizer you can cross off on Monday.

My base: yogurt, grated garlic, lemon zest, a lot of dill and chives, salt and pepper. Taste it the next day, not the first. The garlic calms down overnight and the herbs wake up.

The sausage gets the blame, but the cream cheese is doing just as much. One tablespoon carries about 3 grams of saturated fat, and a typical filling uses a lot of tablespoons.

Cream cheese is also a poor trade for what it gives back. In USDA figures, it delivers less protein per calorie than any other common party food we looked at, while shrimp delivers about thirteen times as much.

Plenty of home cooks have already found the fix: fill the caps with their own chopped stems, onion, garlic and breadcrumbs. I'd add a little olive oil to bind it, parsley for green, and a light dusting of Parmesan on top for that browned crust. A light dusting, mind you. See #14.

You can stuff them in the morning and bake when the doorbell starts. If you bake them ahead, reheat to 165°F, as Mississippi State Extension advises for make-ahead hot foods.

Vegetarian as written. Standard breadcrumbs are made from wheat, one of the FDA's nine major allergens, so use gluten-free crumbs if a celiac guest is coming.

The can with the ridges has about 26 grams of sugar in a quarter cup, by USDA figures. The same amount of raw cranberries has about 1 gram, plus more fiber.

To be fair, nobody eats raw cranberries plain. They're sour enough to make your ears ring, so a fresh salsa needs some sweetener. The difference is that you decide how much, a spoonful at a time, tasting as you go. Go easy. A classic relish adapted from Joy of Cooking, as printed by The Washington Post, lists about 22 grams of sugar a quarter cup, barely under the can.

Pulse the berries in a food processor with a little jalapeño, cilantro, green onion and lime. Sweeten lightly. It's ruby red with green flecks, which is about as Christmas as a bowl can look. Spoon it over the Greek yogurt dip from #12, or onto cucumber rounds.

Harvard Health calls nuts a "healthy yet tasty alternative to traditional holiday sweets". The candied versions, glazed in sugar and butter, undo that. Plain ones roasted with rosemary, a little olive oil and salt still smell like a holiday when they come out of the oven.

The catch is that nuts disappear by the fistful. "Because nuts are high in fat, they are also relatively high in calories," says Devon Peart, a registered dietitian at Cleveland Clinic. A serving is about an ounce, around 160 to 200 calories.

Use small bowls and refill them, rather than one giant bowl that invites grazing.

Then give the bowl a label. Peanuts and tree nuts are both major allergens, and food labels have to name the specific tree nut, so your card should too: "almonds, walnuts, cashews." Food allergies can also develop as we age, so a guest who ate cashews last year may not be able to this year.

If you ever sat with a needle and thread stringing popcorn and cranberries for the tree, you've already been serving a whole grain at Christmas.

Three cups of popcorn counts as one serving of whole grains, according to the Whole Grains Council, with 3 grams of fiber and about 30 calories a cup. That's roughly 90 calories for a bowl that keeps your hands busy all evening.

The Council's tip is to mix the kernels with half a teaspoon of olive oil and salt before popping. After that, dress it for the season: finely chopped rosemary, a little grated orange zest, or a dusting of smoked paprika for a red tint. Serve it in a big wooden bowl and watch who keeps coming back.

"A lot of people use crackers to snack. One of the biggest things to keep in mind is that the calories can add up quickly," Tonya Turner says. They're the vehicle for everything else on the table, so the box you pick matters more than it seems.

Skip the front of the box. Turn it over and read the first ingredient. If it contains the word "whole," the Whole Grains Council says the cracker is likely, though not guaranteed, mostly whole grain.

"Made with whole grain" on the front can mean very little. The Council warns those claims may mean "only miniscule amounts of whole grains." It also says the fiber count isn't a reliable test on its own.

For a sense of what a short list looks like, Triscuit Original names three ingredients: whole grain wheat, canola oil, sea salt, with 3 grams of fiber and no saturated fat per serving.

Whole grain wheat crackers are still wheat. If a celiac guest is coming, the National Celiac Association suggests a gluten-free section of the table with its own serving utensils.

Same dip, two ways. Dietitian Darlene Zimmerman worked out that a traditional spinach-artichoke dip runs 235 calories per quarter cup. Her lighter version comes to 96.

It isn't a sad dip, either. She uses reduced-fat cream cheese and reduced-fat sour cream with a little mayonnaise, so it stays creamy and bakes up bubbly. It lands at 3 grams of saturated fat and 203 mg of sodium a serving.

Bake it in a small dish and refill from a second one kept warm in the oven. A half-empty crock with a crust stuck to the sides never looks inviting.

In my experience, puff pastry bites look wonderful in the magazine and misbehave in the oven. The pastry rises unevenly, the filling slides off, and you're scraping cheese off the baking sheet while guests ring the bell.

Mini phyllo shells skip all that. They come fully baked, and two Athens Mini Fillo Shells add up to 30 calories, no saturated fat and 20 mg of sodium. For extra crunch, Athens suggests baking the empty shells at 350°F for 3 to 5 minutes.

The one rule: fill them immediately before serving, or they go soft. That makes them a make-ahead appetizer in two parts. Fillings get made days ahead, and the shells get filled at the last minute. The cranberry salsa from #10 or the herb dip from #12 both fit.

They contain wheat.

No, you don't have to boil it first. The question comes up under recipe videos, and the answer saves you a pot.

Love and Lemons puts raw florets straight onto the pan at 425°F with about 2 tablespoons of oil per medium head, for 25 to 35 minutes. Their one firm warning: "Don't crowd the baking sheet." Crowded florets steam instead of browning, and browning is the whole point.

Use olive oil, not butter, and the numbers explain why. Butter has about 7.3 grams of saturated fat per tablespoon. Olive oil has 1.86. On one head of cauliflower, butter adds about 14.6 grams, more than the day's suggested limit from #12. Olive oil adds under 4.

For the party, scatter chopped parsley and a few pomegranate seeds over the top and serve with toothpicks. It keeps up to 3 days in the fridge and reheats at 350°F.

Every spread needs something sweet, and a bowl of strawberries with a white topping looks like a Christmas card. The work is in the topping.

Shelly, a registered dietitian who runs a private practice for blood sugar control and weight loss, has one rule for the whipped stuff. "My biggest thing I tell everybody is compare your labels," she says. "Light," "fat-free" and "zero sugar" versions don't match each other, so she goes by the number: "we keep that sugar under five." From context, she means 5 grams per serving on the label. By the maker's own labels, Cool Whip Original has 2 grams per 2 tablespoons, Reduced Fat has 1 and Zero Sugar has 0. All three clear her bar, so the plain tub is fine.

The berries are the easy part. A cup of strawberry halves has about 49 calories, 12 grams of carbohydrate, 3 grams of fiber, and more vitamin C than the broccoli tree in #15.

Shelly still keeps the portion to half a cup for her clients. So serve them in small glasses, a half cup each, with a spoonful of topping and a mint leaf. They look deliberate, and nobody has to fish berries out of a shared bowl.

Under goat cheese appetizer videos on TikTok, the same question keeps turning up: what do I use if I don't like goat cheese, or brie? Here's the answer, with numbers.

Fresh mozzarella is the low sodium winner. It has about a third of the sodium of goat cheese. Those figures come from Melanie Betz, a registered dietitian who specializes in kidney health. If saturated fat is your concern instead, skim-milk mozzarella comes lowest on Penn State's chart, at 3 grams.

Match the swap to the job. For a creamy spread on crostini or in a phyllo cup, whip whole-milk ricotta with lemon zest, black pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. It's mild where goat cheese is tangy, which is exactly why the goat-cheese skeptics will like it. For skewers and caprese-style bites, use fresh mozzarella pearls. Feta is salty enough that a pinch crumbled on top does the work of a slab.

Betz adds one caution worth keeping: "sodium in cheese is different by brand, even for the same type." Check the tub you actually bought.

Smoked salmon on cucumber rounds shows up on nearly every list of light, elegant party food. It's pink, it's pretty, and it takes two minutes. For anyone 65 or older, federal food-safety guidance says to pass.

The CDC's advice for adults 65 and up is to avoid refrigerated smoked seafood, the kind labeled "nova-style," "lox," "kippered" or "smoked," unless it's in a cooked dish. The reason is listeria. "Cold-smoked salmon in particular may have the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes," WebMD notes, in a page reviewed by dietitian Kathleen Zelman. You may read that hot-smoked salmon is safer, but "kippered" salmon, typically hot-smoked, is still named on the CDC's list. Only canned or shelf-stable smoked fish, or a cooked dish, gets a pass.

If you and everyone at your table are under 65, the CDC rule doesn't apply to you. The salt does. One ounce of lox carries about 567 mg of sodium.

So here's the swap I'd make for everybody. Roast fresh salmon instead. Season a fillet with lemon, black pepper and dill, roast it, let it cool, then break it into bite-size flakes. Pile those on thick cucumber rounds with a dab of the herbed yogurt from #12 and a sprig of dill.

It looks nearly as pretty as the smoked version on a platter. It tastes fresh and clean, and it's a cooked dish, so your 65-and-older guests can eat it without a second thought.

If you love the smoky flavor, fold smoked salmon into something baked, like a warm dip or mini frittata bites, which keeps it within the CDC's "cooked dish" exception. Either way, treat it like any seafood: the FDA says no more than 2 hours out of the fridge.