Holiday Part Tip: Slim Down Your DIps

How many times have you gone to a party, only to find your only choices are a cheese ball and crackers and a bowl of greasy chips with thick and creamy onion dip.
Dips are easy and affordable party fare, and they can be healthy too! As you're preparing for your holiday parties, keep these tips in mind.

• Use light mayo, low-fat cream cheese and skim milk in creamy dips.
• Swap pureed white beans for half the mayo to creamy dips to boost calories and cut fat.
• Serve dips with baked whole-grain crackers and vegetables.
• Try pureeing roasted red peppers with low fat plain yogurt.
• Serve smooth or chunky guacamole that's heavy on the vegetables.
• Instead of using store-bought or your traditional homemade chip dip, use regular mayonnaise for half of the recipe and replace the other half with reduced fat sour cream. One cup of lower-fat sour cream will provide all the flavor and texture of mayonnaise but cut 1,3000 calories and 150 grams of fat.

Ditch the chips and dip and try one of these instead:

• Grilled chicken chunks
• Steamed broccoli or cauliflower
• Bite size chunks of crusty whole-grain bread
• Small wheat pretzels
• Pita Chips
• Bell peppers cut into triangles (Remove top and bottom, then core peppers. Slice down center so pepper lies flat, then cut into triangles).
• Endive leaves
• Inner leaves from Romaine lettuce.