9 Foods That Are Making Us Fat This Holiday Season

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[news]

Even before Halloween, the rollout of Holiday goodies begins. As November goes by, all the packaging is turning red and green and everything has a 'pumpkin spice' variety. Us consumers eat these seasonally branded items right up --literally and figuratively! Something about the feeling that these items are 'for a limited time' makes us gobble them up, and while they may do something to boost our holiday cheer, they can be terrible for our waistlines. Before you sip or snack or add a 'holiday edition' treat to your shopping cart, let's take a took at some of the potentially worst nutritional offenders below:

Panera Pumpkin Muffin
Real pumpkin may be the second ingredient in this muffin, but sugar's the first, so let's call this what it really is: a giant cupcake!
1 muffin = 590 calories, 22g fat, 53g of sugar.

Marie Callender's Lattice Apple Pie
I was shocked to find that almost every pie in this line still contains trans fats! And not just a little bit!
1 serving (1/10th pie) = 340 calories, 16g fat (3g trans fat!), 23 g sugar

Hostess Holiday Fruitcake
The joke may be that no one likes fruitcake, but if that were the case, they wouldn't appear on store shelves every holiday season! This one in particular can be deceiving, because its first ingredients are raisins, pineapple, and orange peel, so it can't be that bad for you, right? Wrong. Read on and find preservatives, a ton of sugar (including HFCS) and even trans fats.1 serving (1/4 cake) = 420 calories, 12g fat (