Tag: Health

Score Big with this Skinny Game Day Menu

Tailgating is a sport of its own, with more than 70 million Americans hosting or attending tailgate parties to root on the home team.

But here’s the Game Day dilemma: How can you enjoy yourself and serve up great-tasting food without racking up the calorie and nutritional penalties? Julie Upton, MS, RD, CSSD from Appetite for Health^[1] is here to help with a winning strategy.

The four food groups of football—beer, wings, pizza and chips and dip can really pile on calories. In fact, a tailgate party can set you back some 1,500 calories—and that’s all before kickoff. By the fourth quarter, it’s not uncommon to eat and drink several days’ worth of calories. Some simple substitutions in your Game Day menu can make you the “MVP” of the party. Here’s what to serve and what to sideline, and several winning recipes to try.

Blitz on Chips and Game Day Dip: Opt for baked chips instead of fried to slash calories and fat and make your dips with nonfat plain Greek yogurt in place of sour cream. Using a cup of nonfat Greek yogurt in place of regular sour cream shaves off 315 calories and 45 grams of fat from your dip recipes.

A Few Skinny Dip Ideas:

Skinny Artichoke Dip^[2]
Creamy Cold Parmesan Spinach Dip^[3]
Hot Spinach Dip^[4]
Skinny Taco Dip^[5]
Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip^[6]
Skinny Buffalo Chicken Dip^[7]
Southwestern Black Bean Salsa^[8]

Wings pack in about 75 calories—not counting the dip! Bench Wings and Put Burgers on Your Playbook: For a main course to serve and ones to sack, go with burgers made from ground sirloin or 95% lean ground beef; or make a turkey or salmon burger.

Try these leaner tasty options…

Buffalo Turkey Burgers with Blue Cheese Broccoli Slaw
Chicken Parmigiana Burgers
Turkey Burgers with Zucchini
Spicy Black Bean Burgers with Chipotle Mayo^[9]^[10]^[11]^[12]

If you’re serving pizza, make sure it’s veggie-rich and ask for half the cheese and meat toppings. Or eliminate the bread altogether and serve these Zucchini Pizza Bites^[13].

Score with Extra Light Beer: As an official food group of football, beer is required if it’s a real football party. There are 150 calories in a bottle of regular and 95-100 in most light beers. But if you try a new extra light choices, like MGD 64, Budweiser Select 54 or Beck’s Premier Light you’ll not only have a skinnier sip, you’ll help damper the appetite-stimulating impact of alcohol.

Guest Post from Julie Upton, MS, RD, CSSD from Appetite for Health^[14]

References

^{^} Appetite for Health (www.appforhealth.com)
^{^} Skinny Artichoke Dip (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Creamy Cold Parmesan Spinach Dip (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Hot Spinach Dip (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Skinny Taco Dip (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Skinny Buffalo Chicken Dip (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Southwestern Black Bean Salsa (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Buffalo Turkey Burgers with Blue Cheese Broccoli Slaw (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Chicken Parmigiana Burgers (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Turkey Burgers with Zucchini (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Spicy Black Bean Burgers with Chipotle Mayo (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Zucchini Pizza Bites (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
^{^} Appetite for Health (www.appforhealth.com)

The secret to longevity? Alain’s champion breakfast – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

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The secret to longevity? We should ask Alain Peyrot, 78 years old and with the body of a twenty-year-old in gym: six-pack abs, X-Men-style biceps, an energy and a smile that just looking at him makes you envious. And he makes you look at him. In fact, he seems to have made it a mission since he has become a social phenomenon with almost 200 thousand followers on Instagram and TikTok where, with the name Alain Gustaveposts videos of his super workouts and his busy, busy days.

The Secret of Longevity by Alain Gustave

After a life as an entrepreneur in the real estate sector, He now lives retired in his house in the mountains outside Lucerne, and leads a life extremely marked by physical activity, and in reality not only by that. He wakes up at six in the summer and a little later in the winter, then he shaves and always takes a cold shower. regardless of the season (he says it helps to have “discipline” and to stock up on energy for the day), then at 8 – and never later – the first training session begins: push-ups and sit-ups.

Instagram photo @alaingustave

Alain Gustave’s Breakfast of Champions

Between showering and training, Alain Gustave eats a very large breakfast. In a recent video entirely dedicated to the story of his typical day, he explained that he eats salty food for breakfast: usually two hard boiled or fried eggs, combined with a piece of cheese, a coffee with a little honey (but only exceptionally), dried fruit (usually almonds) and a protein shake. In short, a rich breakfast, but if you look closely, well thought out: dried fruit slows down the absorption of fats such as those contained in fried eggs or cheese (as well as sugars), and provides the body with good fats that are good for the heart and mineral salts such as calcium that are particularly needed during old age. The surplus of proteins that Alain Gustave allows himself with the smoothie is then justified by the amount of physical activity he does during the day: Proteins, in fact, are essential to provide the energy needed for such intense activity but also to promote post-workout muscle repair. If Alain added a slice of bread to this mix, his breakfast would be fully balanced: the carbohydrates would provide him with energy and the fibers they contain would also promote intestinal well-being.

The light dinner of longevity

But it is very likely that this over-seventy-year-old with the body of a twenty-year-old does it without specifying it, since he appears to be very careful about his health. This is also confirmed by the fact that he makes a textbook dinner: in the same video he says that in the evening always eat light, generally lots of vegetables, few fats and few carbohydrates, also to sleep better.

The perfect day

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Glycemic spikes: how to avoid them in summer? The expert speaks – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

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In summer, between holidays, afternoons in the sun and dinners on the beach, it is easier to take risks glycemic peaks by dint of ice creams, aperitifs with lots of snacks, lazy breakfasts full of sweets. Let’s first explain what it means.

Blood glucose levels, or glycemia, are not constant over time, but follow a curvilinear trend. The glycemic curve appears to be influenced by multiple factors: general state of health, absence or presence of pathologies, composition of the meal and distance from it. Blood glucose levels are measured 8 hours after the last meal (this is why blood tests are usually done on an empty stomach in the morning) and the optimal ones are from 70 to 100 mg/dl. For values above 100 mg/dl, we refer to a condition of hyperglycemia. For values below 70 mg/dl, we speak of hypoglycemia.

A blood glucose concentration higher than the reference values, for a healthy person, is a condition present in various pathologies, such as diabetes. However Even non-diabetic people can develop high blood sugar, but subject to conditions or pathologies that involve risk factors (for example, infections, inflammation, hyperthyroidism, pancreatitis, physical stress and pharmacological treatments). Even for a healthy person, it is of fundamental importance to keep blood sugar levels under control periodically: prolonged hyper- or hypoglycemic conditions, if not treated, can lead to important health problems and cause long-term complications. Glycemic peaks can be favored by an unbalanced dietrich in sugars, saturated and trans fats, and refined carbohydrates.

But these peaks can be kept under control even in summer, with a few small precautions: these are suggested to us by Romina Cervigni, scientific director of the Valter Longo Foundation.

How to avoid blood sugar spikes in summer

1. Watch out for breakfast

Breakfast is one of the meals with the greatest risk for the development of a glycemic peak: compared to sweets and snacks, it is better a full mealconsisting of a source of low-glycemic carbohydrates (such as whole-grain bread or cereal or rye bread), a source of sugars (such as no-sugar-added jam or honey), a source of good fats (such as a handful of nuts or a single-ingredient spread), and a source of protein (such as a yogurt or plant-based drink).

2. Fruit

Recommended a daily intake of 150 gramswhich correspond to a medium-sized fruit, combined, for example, with a handful of nuts such as walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts. The fats added with dried fruit allow you to modulate the rapid absorption of sugars from fresh fruit. Some fruits are more sugary than others, such as grapes, mandarins, bananas, figs and persimmons, but it is also true that in the recommended quantities and combinations, and in the context of a healthy and balanced diet, you can choose your own favorite fruit without too many problems.

3. Sweets

Their consumption should be moderate: it would be appropriate to consume them as part of a low glycemic index meal, which also contains proteins and complex carbohydrates, capable of mitigating the glycemic peak caused by sweets. By the same principle, they should go limit so-called ultra-processed foodsi.e. industrially processed: they are often low in fiber and rich in sugar, fat and salt.

4. Ice cream

It contains added sugars such as sucrose, glucose and fructose, in addition to those from milk and fruit. In fruit ice creams on the market, the average amount of sugar is about 25%, while in cream ice creams, the percentage is slightly lower, about 20%, but it is compensated by a higher fat content. The advice is to buy artisanal ice creams prepared with seasonal ingredientspossibly of organic origin, and to possibly eat them at the end of the meal as a substitute for fruit (and never together), avoiding the addition of biscuit garnishes or industrial toppings, which are particularly rich in simple sugars.

5. Vegetables

In controlling blood sugar, it is very important that each meal contains a portion of vegetablesbecause the fiber it contains slows down the absorption of carbohydrates and simple sugars.

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