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Holidays

Food and the Super Bowl

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Super Bowl Food Trivia

Super Bowl 51 is this Sunday. Even though professional football — as we know it – has been around since 1920, the first Super Bowl only dates back to January 1967.

Super Bowl Sunday certainly has the trappings of a holiday both in the US and in many expat communities. It’s the most watched annual television program in the US and ranks second (Thanksgiving is first) as the day for most food consumption. Over 20 million Americans attend Super Bowl parties and half of all Americans say they would rather go to a Super Bowl party than to a New Year’s Eve party.

It’s amazing how food has become associated with football — from tailgating to food for the game.  Think of all the hand to mouth munching on chips, dips, and wings; a swig or two or three; a cookie here and there.  And then there’s the “real food” at halftime – or maybe there’s pizza first followed by a selection of subs. By the end of the game do you have a clue about how much – or even what — you have popped into your mouth?

Super Bowl Food Facts

  • About one in twenty (9 million) Americans watch the game at a restaurant or a bar.
  • Americans double their average daily consumption of snacks on Super Bowl Sunday, downing more than 33 million pounds in one day.
  • The average Super Bowl watcher consumes 1,200 calories. Overall, potato chips are the favorite munchie and, in total, account for 27 billion calories and 1.8 billion fat grams — the same as 4 million pounds of fat or equal to the weight of 13,000 NFL offensive linemen at 300 pounds each.
  • Nearly one in eight (13%) Americans order takeout/delivery food for the Super Bowl. The most popular choices are pizza (58%), chicken wings (50%), and subs/sandwiches (20%). Almost 70% of Super Bowl watchers eat a slice (or two or three) during the game.
  • The amount of chicken wings eaten clocks in at 90 million pounds or 450 million individual wings. It would take 19 chicken breasts to get the same amount of fat that you usually get from a dozen Buffalo wings.
  • On Super Bowl Sunday we eat an estimated 14,500 tons of potato chips, 4000 tons of tortilla chips, and eight million pounds of avocados. Five ounces of nacho cheese Doritos is equal to around 700 calories. You’d have to run the length of 123 football fields to burn them off.  You’d have to eat 175 baby carrots or 700 celery sticks to get the same number of calories.
  • According to 7-eleven, sales of antacids increase by 20% on the day after Super Bowl.
  • Pizza restaurants love Super Bowl Sunday – it’s their busiest day of the year, according to the National Restaurant Association. Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, and Domino’s sell twice as many pies as they do on any other day. Domino’s expects to sell 11 million slices.
  • The Hass Avocado Board predicts that over Super Bowl weekend approximately100 million pounds of guacamole will be eaten – and approximately 14,500 tons of chips are used to scoop it up.
  • About 2 million cases of beer are sold every year for Super Bowl – which might explain why 6% of Americans call in sick for work the next day.

What To Eat For Good Luck In The New Year — And What To Avoid!

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Pork products, fish, beans, cakes with coins, grapes, and pickled herring? Maybe lentils, black-eyed peas, cooked greens or long noodles?

Food and symbolism play important roles in celebrations around the world. On special occasions different countries use certain foods — not just to celebrate — but often as a symbol of luck, wealth, and health.

What Not To Eat (Hint: Don’t Look Or Move Back)

Different cultures have foods that are supposed to be eaten at the stroke of midnight or sometime on January 1 to bring luck, fortune, and plenty (both money and food).

There are also foods not to eat. Things that move or scratch backwards — like lobsters, chickens, and turkeys — are to be avoided because they symbolize moving backward instead of progressing forward. To avoid any looking back, setbacks, or past struggles only things that move forward should be eaten.

In some cultures, a little food should be left on the table or on your plate to guarantee – or at least to hedge your bets – that you’ll have a well-stocked kitchen during the coming year.

Why Tempt Fate — Some Lucky Foods To Consider

There are many New Year’s foods and traditions — far too numerous to list – that are honored by people all around the world. Wouldn’t you want to consider piling some luck on your plate on January 1? Why tempt fate?

Here are some of the more common groups of good luck foods:

  • Round foods shaped like coins, like beans, black eyed peas, and legumes, symbolize financial prosperity, as do greens, which resemble paper money. Examples are cabbage, collard greens, and kale. Golden colored foods like corn bread also symbolize financial rewards in the New Year. Examples of round good luck foods are: lentils in Italy and Brazil, pancakes in Germany, round fruit in the Philippines, and black-eyed peas in the Southern US. Green leafy vegetables that symbolize paper money are collard greens in the Southern US and kale in Denmark.
  • Pork symbolizes abundance, plenty of food, and the fat of the land (think pork barrel legislation). It’s a sign of prosperity and the pig symbolizes plentiful food in the New Year. The pig is considered an animal of progress because it moves forward as it roots around for food. Pork products appear in many ways – ham, sausage, ham hocks, pork ribs, and even pig’s knuckles. Years ago, if your family had a pig you were doing well. Some examples of good luck pork products are roast suckling pig with a four leaf clover in its mouth in Hungary; pork sausage with lentils in Italy; and pork with sauerkraut in Germany.
  • In some countries, having food on your table and/or plates at the stroke of midnight is a sign that you’ll have food throughout the year.
  • Seafood, with the exception of the backward swimming lobster, symbolizes abundance and plenty and is a symbol of good luck. Fish also symbolize fertility because they produce multiple eggs at a time. It’s important that a fish be served whole, with the head and tail intact to symbolize a good beginning and a good end. Examples are herring and carp in Germany, pickled herring in Poland, boiled cod in
Denmark, dried salted cod in Italy, red snapper in Japan, and carp in
Vietnam.
  • Eating sweet food in order to have a sweet year is common in a number of countries. In Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Cuba,
Ecuador, and
Peru 12 sweet grapes, one for each month of the year, are eaten at midnight in hope of having 12 sweet months. The order and sweetness of the grape is important – for instance, if the fifth grape is a bit sour, the month of May might be a bit rocky. In some places the goal is to eat all of the grapes before the last stroke of midnight and some countries eat a 13th grape just for good measure. There seems to be an awful lot of hedging of bets all around the world.
  • Another symbol for good luck involves eating food that’s in a ring shape – like doughnuts or ring shaped cakes. This represents coming full circle to successfully complete the year. Examples are Rosca de Reyes in Mexico and Olie Bollen (doughnuts) in the Netherlands.
  • Long noodles signify a long life. The Japanese use long Buckwheat Soba noodles – but you shouldn’t cut or break them because that could shorten life.
  • Chinese New Year, an all East and Southeast Asia celebration, is known as “Spring Festival” in China, begining on the first day of the first month in the traditional Chinese lunar calendar. It’s filled with tradition and ritual and usually considered the most important traditional holiday for Chinese people around the world.
  • The holiday is celebrated with lucky red envelopes filled with money, lion and dragon dances, drums, fireworks, firecrackers, and feasting on traditional sweet sticky rice cake and round savory dumplings that symbolize never-ending wealth. On New Year’s Eve extended family come together for a meal that includes fish as the last course to symbolize abundance. In the first five days of the New Year people eat long noodles to symbolize long life and on the 15th and final day of the celebration round dumplings shaped like the full moon are shared to represent the family unit and perfection. Source:com
  • Sweets are symbolic of a sweet year and/or good luck. Cakes and breads with coins or trinkets baked into them are common in many countries. Greeks have a round cake called Vasilopita – made with a coin baked inside — which is cut after midnight. Whoever gets the coin is lucky throughout the year. Jews use apples dipped in honey on the Jewish New Year, Norwegians use rice pudding with an almond inside, Koreans use sweet fruits, and Egyptians have candy for children.

So fill your plate with a serving of luck. As for resolutions — they’re not quite as tasty as many food traditions, but they do have longevity — they date back 4000 years to the ancient Babylonians!

In my family we bake Vasilopita and each one of us will be hoping we crunch on the piece with the hidden coin.

I wish you a Healthy and Happy 2017.

Is Santa Having Trouble Buckling His Belt?

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It seems that Santa has some weight challenges – no small wonder with all of the cookies and milk left out for him on Christmas Eve! Plus, he uses a sleigh pulled by reindeer so he just slides down the chimney. That might be a tough task with that belly and big bag of presents, but it doesn’t use up a whole lot of calories.

On Christmas Eve, Santa visits an estimated 92 million households. Walking.about.com figures that if all households were evenly distributed across the earth, Santa would travel 0.78 miles between houses — for a total of 71,760,000 (71.8 million) miles.

What Are Santa’s Stats?

According to NORAD, Santa tips the scale at 260 pounds and he’s 5’7” tall, giving him a BMI of 40.7 — which, unfortunately, makes him obese.

Walking.about.com guessing that Santa weighs 250 pounds and thinking that he’s a pretty fast walker because he does have to get his deliveries done in one night, estimates that Santa burns 13 billion calories on Christmas Eve.

If Santa climbed stairs delivering his presents, Big12Hoops calculated that he would climb the equivalent of 9.5 billion stairs.   He would burn 0.11 calories for each stair, or 1.045 billion calories. That’s far fewer than 13 billion calories, but it’s still a whole lot of energy expenditure that would leave him mighty thin, maybe so thin that he could slip through a crack on Christmas morning.

Does Santa Need All The Milk and Cookies Left Out For Him?

Two small cookies and a cup of skim milk (no full fat dairy for Santa, he might have cholesterol issues) clock in at about 200 calories. If Santa snacked at each of the 92 million households, he would chow down on 18.4 billion calories.

That would mean he would gain 1,529,350 pounds every Christmas. If he walked instead of rode in his sleigh –Rudolph is probably well-trained enough to take the lead without Santa’s hands on the reins — he’d have to circle the earth 1,183 times to burn off the extra calories from the milk and cookies.

What If Santa Snacked On Veggies Instead Of Cookies?

If Santa had a cup of carrot and celery sticks rather than cookies and milk at each house, he’d be eating just 50 calories — which would add up to 4.6 billion calories for the evening. Since he burns off 13 billion calories by walking, he’d actually lose so much weight that he’d disappear from sight.

Maybe the best idea for him would be to have a nice combination of veggies at most households and cookies and low fat milk every thousand or so households. That probably would keep him happy, energetic, and in caloric balance!

But … Santa has been delivering presents and eating cookies for a very long time. He magically reappears every year as jolly as ever. He seems to be doing quite nicely with his usual routine, don’t you think?

Ho Ho Ho! Merry Christmas!

15 Easy-On-The-Waistline Holiday Eating Tips

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holiday eating waistline tips

The holidays are here. You can’t go anywhere without sugary, glittery, shiny holiday themed food calling your name.

Holidays create a “perfect storm” for eating way too much. They combine some of the worst cues and triggers for overeating: family drama, too much food (much of it sweet and fatty), tradition and ritual, stress eating, and the attitude of “why not – it’s the holidays.” All too frequently the default then becomes: “I’ll start my diet in the New Year, or after Easter, of in September after Labor Day” – or after a month of Sundays!

Do You Really Want To Count Calories On A Holiday?

No way. Holiday food is special and holiday traditions and rituals are hallmarks we count on.

When you restrict yourself of may foods, it often means that you end up depriving yourself of traditional and possibly your favorite foods that you associate with holidays. When you do deprive yourself of those cherished foods, more often than not you end up later that night standing in front of an open fridge rummaging for leftovers still feeling the sting from the stare down you had with your favorite foods earlier in the day.

What’s Your Holiday Game Day Plan?

What’s your game plan? Does it allow you to enjoy the holiday and the food (really important). On a holiday you know you’ll eat a bit more – or maybe a bit more than a bit more – than on a typical day.

Balance it out by allowing for a range of calories during the holiday and the days surrounding it. To maintain your weight, the overall number of calories you eat should approximate the calories you burn, so compensate by eating a little lighter the days before and after (and maybe adding in some extra activity).

15 Tips and Strategies

Here are some tips — choose what you can commit to and that will work best for you. Then build them into your personal holiday eating plan.

1. Don’t starve yourself the day of a holiday meal or party. If you attempt to save up calories for a splurge, you’ll probably be so hungry by the time dinner is served you’ll end up shoving food into your mouth faster than you can say turkey. Have a protein and fiber snack (around 150 calories) and something to drink beforehand, but don’t skip meals or arrive famished.

2. Give yourself permission to NOT eat something that you usually eat just because it’s a holiday tradition. Certain foods may taste, look, or smell like Thanksgiving or Christmas, but that doesn’t mean you have to eat them. It’s still the holiday without them.

3. Ask yourself if you’re eating something because you like it or are you eating it for another reason — perhaps because you’ve been eating the same holiday food since you were a kid. Maybe you don’t even like the food any more or it disagrees with you. So why are you eating it? Who’s forcing you to? Eat what you want — not what you think you should.

4. Say no to the friends and relatives who push the extra piece of pie and the second helping of stuffing, or who constantly refill your drink. You’re the one stepping on the scale or zipping up your jeans the next day – not them.

5. Have your own personal rules and swaps for what you will or won’t eat and commit to sticking with them ahead of time. Your rules are an integral part of your game plan. Examples might be: I really want pecan pie for dessert so I’ll only have one biscuit without butter with my meal. Or, I’ll only take two hors d’oeuvres from the passed trays at a cocktail party. This will both limit how much you eat and will also make you think carefully and choose what you really want instead of randomly sampling everything.

6. Acknowledge your red flags, your trigger foods. Can you be near Christmas cookies without eating a dozen? Do you overeat at family events? There’s no need to psychoanalyze why. Just know the things that serve as your red flags and have a plan to deal with them.

7. Decide what’s really worth an indulgence. Then fill up on the lower calorie volume foods — like vegetables — so you won’t have tons of room left for the splurges. If you’re a sucker for desserts, stick with lean protein and veggies for your main course followed by a reasonable slice of cheesecake. Or if the stuffing and au gratin potatoes are calling your name, have them, but skip or skimp on the desserts.

8. Make a deal (with yourself) that you can eat what you want during dinner. Put the food on your plate, eat it with a fork, and enjoy every last morsel. Clean your plate if you want to. But – that’s it. No seconds and no double-decking the plate.

9. Choose your beverages wisely. Alcohol clocks in at 7 calories a gram. Alcohol with mixers adds even more calories. Plus, alcohol takes the edge off lots of things – including your ability to stick to your plan. Drink water. It fills you up. Have a diet soda if you want. If you’re going to drink alcohol, try limiting the amount – think about alternating with water or seltzer.

10. Control your food environment the best you can. Don’t hang around the buffet table or stand next to the platter of delicious whatevers. Why are you tempting yourself? Go into another room or the farthest corner away from serving table.

11. Keep your back to the buffet. For most people, food that is out of sight is out of mind.

12. Don’t eat off of someone else’s plate, finish your kids’ food, sample your spouse’s pie, or take a taste of this and a taste of that as you walk around the party. One bite here and one bite there doesn’t seem like much, but add them up and you’ll be shocked. Mindless bites average about 25 calories apiece. Four mindless bites a day means around a hundred (extra) calories. Do this daily and by the end of a month you might have gained close to a pound. Because it’s so easy to overlook those hand to mouth sneaky bites, make a deal with yourself that you’ll only eat food that’s on a plate.

13. Have a conversation. It’s hard to shove food in your mouth when you’re talking. Hold a glass in your hand, even if it has water or seltzer in it, and a napkin in the other hand. It’s hard to nibble and nosh when your hands are full.

14. Get rid of leftovers. Leftover stuffing has defeated the best-laid plans and don’t nibble during clean up (or preparation for that matter). Broken cookies, pieces of pie crust, and the last bits of stuffing haven’t magically lost their calories.

15. Don’t multi-task. Try to avoid combining eating with other activities. Distractions are a major contributor to overeating. When you’re with family and friends the last thing on your mind is going to be how many nachos you just inhaled while some annoying in-law was yakking your ear off. TV is another major culprit. When you sit down to catch a game, parade, or a holiday special, be sure that there isn’t a big bowl of munchies sitting right next to you waiting to sabotage your waistline.

What If You Ate Everything In Sight?

If you ate everything is sight and your exercise was walking back and forth to the to the buffet table, take heart, It was just one day. It’s not so difficult to make up for your indulgences over the next few days.

The danger is letting it stretch into days or weeks. That’s when your waistline starts expanding and the pound you gained this year stays there and gets joined by another the following year.

Enjoy the holidays and the traditions that are important to you. Be thankful and joyous. Isn’t that the point?

How Long Can Your Turkey Safely Stay On The Table — And The Leftovers In The Fridge?

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Holiday Food Safety Guidelines

Once Your Bird Is Cooked, Does It Matter How Long You Leave It Out?

It definitely matters – and the clock starts ticking as soon as the bird comes out of the oven, fryer, or off the grill.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of reported cases of food borne illness (food poisoning) increases during the holiday season.

You shouldn’t leave food out for more than two hours, any time of the year. To save turkey leftovers, remove the stuffing from the turkey cavity, cut the turkey off the bone, and refrigerate or freeze all the leftovers.

The Basic Rules For Leftovers

According to the USDA the mantra is:

2 Hours – 2 Inches – 4 Days

  • 2 Hours from oven to refrigerator: Refrigerate or freeze your leftovers within 2 hours of cooking (taking them off the heat or out of the oven). Throw them away if they are out longer than that. Think about your buffet table – or even your holiday dinner table. How long does the bird, stuffing, and accompaniments sit out as people eat, go back for seconds, and pick their way through the football game and conversation?
  • 2 Inches thick to cool it quick: Store your food at a shallow depth–about 2 inches–to speed chilling. Are you guilty of piling the food high in storage containers or in a big mound covered with tin foil?
  • 4 Days in the refrigerator – otherwise freeze it: Use your leftovers that are stored in the fridge within 4 days. The exceptions are stuffing and gravy. They should both be used within 2 days. Reheat any solid leftovers to 165 degrees Fahrenheit and bring liquid leftovers to a rolling boil. Toss what you don’t finish.

How Long Can Leftover Turkey Stay In The Freezer?

Frozen leftover turkey, stuffing, and gravy should be used within one month. To successfully freeze leftovers, package them using freezer wrap or freezer containers. Use heavy-duty aluminum foil, freezer paper, or freezer bags for best results and don’t leave any air space. Squeeze the excess air from the freezer bags and fill rigid freezer containers to the top with dry food. Without proper packaging, circulating air in the freezer can create freezer burn – those white dried-out patches on the surface of food that make it tough and tasteless. Leave a one-inch headspace in containers with liquid and half an inch in containers filled with semi-solids.

Turkey: Nutrition

Keep that turkey safe to eat because whether you’re eating it on Thanksgiving Day or for several days afterward, it’s good to know that it is low in fat and high in protein. A 3.5 oz serving is about the size and thickness of a new deck of cards. The fat and calorie content varies because white meat has less fat and fewer calories than dark meat and skin.

Calories in a 3.5 oz serving from a whole roasted turkey:

  • Breast with skin: 194 calories; 8g fat; 29g protein
  • Breast without skin: 161 calories; 4g fat; 30g protein
  • Wing with skin: 238 calories; 13g fat; 27g protein
  • Leg with skin: 213 calories; 11g fat; 28g protein
  • Dark meat with skin: 232 calories; 13g fat; 27g protein
  • Dark meat without skin: 192 calories; 8g fat; 28g protein
  • Skin only: 482 calories; 44g fat; 19g protein