Eggnog Nutritional Value and Alternatives - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats.

Eggnog Nutritional Value and Alternatives: Nutrition

Eggnog can actually be very nutritional, because it has milk, eggs, it's made from milk and eggs. And it can actually be very high in calcium, and high in Vitamin A, and very high in protein. The problem is, it comes at a very high calorie cost, because if it's made just with the standard whole milk, eggs, and a lot of times, cream, it's going to have a lot of saturated fat. In fact, 8 ounces of eggnog, traditionally made, has about half of your day's worth of saturated fat. So with all the other foods you probably plan to eat over the holidays, that's a lot of calories to be drinking, and fat to be drinking.

There are commercial light eggnogs available. Those are going to be much better choices. If you're going to make it from scratch, you can definitely substitute fat free milk, cut back the fat that way. You can use fat free half and half instead of cream, and Egg Beaters instead of eggs. And you could actually make a fat free eggnog that way. So that would be one way to go. You might also use soy milk, and that would be fat free as well, and be another healthy alternative.

If you're pregnant or breast feeding, or immuno-compromised, you want to avoid consuming raw eggs. But if you buy commercial eggnog that's pasteurized, you should be okay, as those have not generally been linked to salmonella poisoning. Or if you buy a soy nog, you're going to be fine, because those usually don't have eggs in them.