Hi I’m Kim Benson and you’re watching parents TV. I love football but for years, I hated football season.
That was when I weighed 350 pounds and I’d be driving along in the car listening to news radio and on
come the sports update. The announcer would always talk about these huge linebackers and boy, these
guys were 350 pounds. I hated it because I was 5 foot 5, female and I was 350 pounds. So since then
I’ve lost more than 200 pounds and today listening to the sports caster is just a gentle reminder for me
to stay on track with my healthy eating. To be honest I still love to eat great food including those really
yummy snack foods that you think about when January rolls around, all those great finger foods and
gooey dips are usually so high in fat and calories but they don’t have to be. Here’s a great example. The
infamous chicken wing. I used think that chicken wings weren’t fattening because they were well
chicken but here’s a great substitution. These delicious chicken buffalo chicken tenders were made with
pure white meat and for the sauce, all I’ve done is mix equal amounts of red hot sauce with a buffalo
wing sauce. No butter at all, you don’t need it, it tastes delicious. I like to serve them right out of the
slow cooker but if you’re a more dried chicken fan like my sons are, you can just lay them on cookie
sheet and slow bake them for 25 minutes turning them over every now and then in a 350 degree oven.
You won't get to suck on a chicken bone but this simple substitution will save you lots of fat and calories.
Three wings, 160 calories, 10 grams of fat compared to a third of a pound of chicken tenders, only 40
calories, no fat. Don’t forget the blue cheese, you can put out light blue cheese or fat free blue cheese
but I have this really yummy-I hate to call it a recipe because it’s more just like mixing a few ingredients.
I love fat free crumbled feta. It’s moist, it’s delicious and it’s completely fat free. It’s got a great flavor,
trust me. I mix a little bit of light ranch dressing with it, put it together and you can do whatever
consistency you want. I like it a little bit tasty and it is one of the absolute most delicious combination of
ingredients. They taste so good together and they grow great with the buffalo chicken wings. The total
recipe savings are more than 180 calories and 25 grams of fat, yowzer. What about substitutions at the
grocery store? I want to put out some chips and dip. Try a light chip instead of a baked chip. 7 chips,
every 7 chips you’re going to save 6 grams of fat. That’s a lot and I’ve got here a really quick simple
recipe for a yummy dip. I will just start with fat free sour cream. I’m going to add to it as much salsa as I
want. I like to have just about equal amounts and I’m just going to add a packet of fat free ranch dip
mix.
It is a really fabulous flavor, these three together. Eating right doesn’t have to cost more or take more
time to prepare but it does take some thought and planning. All of these great recipes and tips and
many more can be found in my website, kimbenson.com. Come on, lighten up it’s easy, trust me. And
even your favorite couch potatoes won't know the difference. Coming up, I’m going to give you some
tips for reading a nutrition label.
You’re watching parents TV. Email us at ideas@parents.tv.
You’re walking down the aisle of the grocery store and all of a sudden you hear it, low sugar, low
sodium, fat free. All natural, buy me, buy me. The buzz roots start jumping out at you screaming for
you to purchase them. What do you look for when you’re checking out the nutrition facts on the back of
the box of cereal? Understanding the USDA nutrition label is not an easy job but it’s a very important
one and today what we’re going to do is take a quick peek at the nutrition label and see if we can
demystify it a little bit. You want to start at the top of the label with the serving size and the servings
per container. If the serving size is more than one, you plan on eating the entire package of whatever
that is, you’re going to need to multiply the number of servings by each nutritional listing there is. So
look at the number of calories per serving. The label here has a serving size of two but if I ate both of
them, I’d be eating 160 calories, not the 80 that it’s listed for.
And I love this example. These are two of my favorite products, they’re both Campbell’s chicken and
star soup. This however and they both say 70 calories in the nutrition label, in the calorie section but
this one is for serving size of one and this one because it’s condensed is for serving size of two and a
half. So a lot of people eat the entire can of chicken and star soup or add their water to it to make the
whole can of it but if you do that, you’re going to be getting 70 x 2.5 which is 140 plus 35, 175 instead of
the 70 calories that are listed on this one so it can be very deceiving. The next three ingredients or
nutrients that are listed are your fat, your cholesterol and your sodium. These are the items that you
want to limit. Moving on down the label, you want to get enough of the last group of nutrients, the
fiber, protein, vitamins and minerals. The FDA bases these percentages on a 2000 calorie a day diet.
The percent daily value helps you to determine if a serving of food is high or low in a nutrient and how
much they’re able to contribute to your daily recommended allowance. Basically, that’s a lot of
mambojumbo to say, 5% or less is low and that’s a good range for those items in here of the nutrients
that you want to limit and 20% or more is high. That’s a great range for the things that you want to eat
plenty of. That’s the short version of label reading 101 but whatever you do, make sure you turn the
can around before you throw it into your grocery cart. For all these tips and more, head to my website,
kimbenson.com. For parents TV, I’m Kim Benson.