TACKLING CALORIES

With a few ingredient changes, your Super Bowl snacks can become less fattening.

Asbury Park Press, January 28, 2009
AMANDA OGLESBY
STAFF WRITER

It's Super Bowl Sunday. Your friends are fretting over their favored team, but you are fretting over the hors d'oeuvres, fantasizing about ruining your New Year's resolution on blue cheese dressing-slathered Buffalo wings or a tempting bowl of potato chips.

While your buddies are counting yards, you are counting calories. They are tallying bets — you are tallying the hours of exercise you'll need to tackle those bacon-covered potato skins.

With some portion control and some creative cooking tricks, food experts tell how the calorie-conscious and the health-minded can enjoy some of their favorite Super Bowl Sunday foods without breaking their pant seams.

Jessie Price, food editor of EatingWell magazine and predominant cook behind EatingWell's "Comfort Foods Made Healthy," points out one fattening party culprit of destroyed diets — the Buffalo chicken wing.

Buffalo Wings

"We have a problem with Buffalo wings. The cut of meat they come from, the chicken wing itself, is just too fatty," Price said. "It's more skin than actual meat, and that means it has tons of saturated fat."

To indulge her love of Buffalo wings, Price swaps fatty chicken wings for leaner chicken tenders. "Chicken tenders are perfect because they're totally lean, and they're convenient. They come already trimmed and packaged, ready to go," she said.

Instead of deep-frying her "wings," Price sautes the meat in a small amount of canola oil, which contains monounsaturated fats that are healthier on the heart than saturated fat, she said.

The American Heart Association claims saturated fats found in many animal products, which are typically solid at room temperature, raise the level of cholesterol in the blood, and high amounts over a lifetime increase the risk of heart disease. The association recommends swapping saturated fats with monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats, which are typically liquid at room temperature and are common in certain types of vegetable oils, fish and nuts.

In addition to having high amounts of saturated fat, traditional Buffalo wings frequently contain high amounts of sodium, due to the types of hot sauce used in the recipes, Price said. For her boneless Buffalo wings, "we made a Buffalo sauce that was part red hot sauce, but then we added vinegar and cayenne pepper," which cut the total sodium, she said.

Potato Skins

Besides chicken wings, potato skins are another Super Bowl party staple that a few ingredient changes will render less fattening, said Heather Morgan Shott, senior food editor at Better Homes and Gardens and MixingBowl.com.

Slathered in melted cheese, covered in bacon and topped with sour cream, one or two potato skins are a delicious temptation to the calorie-conscious. Shott advises fastidiously low-fat adherence to "make yours with fat-free or low-fat cheddar cheese and turkey bacon instead of regular bacon. Then serve it with fat-free sour cream," she said. "You can make any kind of sour cream-based dip much healthier by using a fat-free sour cream. You really can't even taste the difference."

Consuming salsa rather than cream-based dips and substituting potato chips with whole wheat crackers or baked pita chips are other ways to reduce fat intake, she said.

"I always recommend bringing a healthy dish to any kind of Super Bowl party," Shott said. "Your host will appreciate that you're contributing to the work of making the party food, but then you're guaranteed to have at least one item to eat that isn't packing a lot of calories or fat."

High-Calorie Drinks

Portly potato skins and other fatty foods aren't the only high-calorie enemies during the game, Shott warns.

"People drink a lot of calories and don't think about it," she said. "Some people might go for a Cosmo, which packs about 320 calories. If you switch to some kind of light rum, like a Bacardi and have it with a diet soda, you're looking at 60 calories. That's an amazing difference."

Even with healthy choices, over-eating even the healthiest food will result in too many calories consumed, said nutritionist Robyn Flipse, author of "The Wedding Dress Diet" and "Fighting the Freshman Fifteen."

No Free Pass

The Super Bowl, like any other holiday, is not a "free pass" for the weight-wary to eat anything they want, she said.

"Why are those four hours any different than any other four hours when it comes to eating?" said Flipse, owner of Nutrition Communication Services based in Bradley Beach.

Be wary of "grazing" during the game, she said.

"It's the casual eating while watching television — you're not actually putting a plate of food together — you're just grazing for hours that leads to overeating," she said. Instead of eating from a collective bowl, grab a plate to portion the snacks.

"Take away the mindset that you can eat anything you want," Flipse said. "We have to be responsible for the way we eat every single day of the year."

Celebrating by overindulging and overeating are unhealthy mindsets that need to be broken, she said.

To avoid overeating unhealthy items, don't go to game day parties hungry. Shott suggests having a healthy snack, like grilled veggies, before leaving to avoid splurging on high calorie foods once there. Also, "don't camp out at the food table," she warns.

Once at the party, it is OK to try a bit of the full-fat cheese dips and a little fried food, as long as other daily nutritional needs are met and the calorie intake does not exceed a person's daily need, Flipse said.

The nutritionist suggests health-concerned hosts should limit food to meals before or after the game, and snacks to halftime. "We're talking about a four hour period here," Flipse said. "It isn't as if anyone would starve to death if they weren't eating during this show."