Healthy Food Choices for Tailgating

Tailgating is an American pastime that needs a healthy overhaul. Learn how to create your own nutritious tail gate party in this video.

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Eat grilled chicken or fruit kabobs
Create a vegetable tray
Use lean ground beef or turkey

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Alice Merritt is currently the Campus Dietitian at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She has a masters degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in public health with a concentration on nutrition. Alice has worked as a registered dietician for four years, and believes that helping people reach their nutritional goals will lead to a long and healthy life.

ALICE MERRRIT: Now, I'm going to talk to you about tailgating. Tailgating is a favorite American pastime that we often associate unhealthy foods with tailgating, like chicken wings, fried chicken, barbecue, hotdogs. I'm going to talk to you about some healthier choices today. Some healthier choices are things like grilled chicken skewers. You can make fruit kebabs. You can also make if you want to make chili, you can have lots of vegetables to it, use lean ground turkey instead of ground beef. You can take hummus with whole wheat pita wedges, making a nice vegetable tray with a light or low-fat ranch dip. You can also pack sandwiches on whole wheat bread. Try to limit them out of mayonnaise. Choosing leaner meats like turkey, lean ham, lean roast beef as your meat fillings. Another thing we often think about with tailgating is coleslaw and potato salad. So when you're making these traditional things, if you use lower fat choices like low-fat mayonnaise or fat-free mayonnaise, low-fat sour cream, those are easy ways that you can save yourself some calories. So important things to remember with tailgating is pack a healthy meal when you're tailgating with friends. Remember to incorporate a variety of foods. Bringing some fruits, bringing whole grains. It's also important to remember those good substitutions for traditional things like potato salad, using the fat-free or low-fat choices when possible. All of these things will make your tailgating lots of fun and healthy.

Healthy Food Choices for Tailgating Video

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