Favorite Holiday Flavors That Make You Healthier

No wonder everyone loves holiday foods. Certain holiday flavors (not as many as Tiger has girlfriends, but enough, nevertheless) can leave you more focused, more energetic, healthier, and maybe, just maybe, even thinner.

Reach for: cinnamon.
When you want to: Stay alert -- and alive. Try a whiff of cinnamon when you have a long drive ahead of you; research has shown that it decreases fatigue on the road. And people with diabetes who added three-eighths of a teaspoon of cinnamon to their daily routine had better blood sugar levels after about a month. Sorry, it doesn't work if you sprinkle the cinnamon on top of a jumbo icing-topped breakfast roll.

Reach for: ginger.
When you want to: Soothe a sour stomach. Ginger is also known to help quell motion sickness, reduce lousy LDL cholesterol, thwart artery-clogging clots, kill ovarian cancer cells, quash inflammation, and maybe even fend off the common cold. Of course, consuming 50 ginger cookies isn't the way to get the goodness of this root; better to take it in extract form (which, in fact, has been shown to reduce the stiffness and pain of osteoarthritis if taken every day).

Reach for: peppermint.
When you want to: Wake up and focus (maybe while putting that tricycle together on Christmas Eve). You pay better attention to dull jobs when this scent is in the air. And you might even be able to use peppermint to your waist's advantage. People who sniff peppermint (grapefruit works, too) every couple of hours eat fewer calories and consume less fat and sugar than people who don't take a whiff.