How Kansas City Chiefs’ Dietitian Makes Players’ Junk Food Healthy

• Leslie Bonci has been the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs’ lead dietitian since 2015. 
• Kansas Metropolis has been a constant Tremendous Bowl contender and received a championship since she joined. 
• One in all her strategies is to design a menu that has junk meals, however with sneaky dietary worth.

The Kansas City Chiefs can go to their third straight Tremendous Bowl in the event that they beat the Cincinnati Bengals within the AFC Championship sport this weekend. As one of many NFL’s most profitable groups of the previous decade, Kansas Metropolis has made the playoffs seven years in a row.

In every of these final seven years, the Chiefs’ food regimen plan has been rigorously curated by head dietitian Leslie Bonci. 

Bonci is a 32-year veteran NFL dietitian. She spent the primary 25 years of her profession as a dietitian with the Pittsburgh Steelers, earlier than becoming a member of the Chiefs in 2015. 

One in all Bonci’s key tasks is working with the Chiefs’ participant foodservice and designing meals for the workforce eating room. Her goal is to make as lots of the gamers selected to eat in-house meals with their teammates, whereas nonetheless giving them nutrition geared to their physical demands as soccer gamers.

“Having labored with the Steelers, one in every of their energy coaches was all about taking away meals that gamers favored, and that is not going to work. You already know why? as a result of they will go some place else, they will go to 5 Guys, or they will go to Whataburger,” Bonci informed Insider. 

Bonci mentioned her technique is to give players the option to eat meals like pizza, burgers, fried rooster, and pasta, however to tweak them barely to load up on important vitamins and minimize out unhealthy fat and sugars. Making wholesome variations of meals that everybody loves, Bonci mentioned, additionally encourages gamers to eat collectively, no matter their private strategy to food regimen, which is sweet for workforce chemistry and morale. 

“All these issues are on the market for guys to do what they need. Some have a extremely subtle palette, and others eat like a two-year-old,” Bonci mentioned. “That is OK, we are able to accommodate.”

Bonci’s small tweaks to junk meals meals that make them a bit more healthy for the gamers

Bonci has a go-to method so as to add dietary worth to gamers’ favourite meals that are not all the time the healthiest.

Fried rooster: For one, fried chicken and different fried meals aren’t deep-fried however fairly air-fried. Air-frying rooster as a substitute of deep-frying reduces the quantity of sodium, ldl cholesterol, and trans fats.

Pizza: For the workforce’s pizzas, Bonci makes a skinny whole-grain crust that comprises ground-up beans. Including beans to common baked meals is one in every of her frequent tips to feeding the gamers extra protein, fiber, nutritional vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. She may also put extra lean rooster and greens as toppings for added protein and nutritional vitamins. 

Pasta: For pasta dishes, Bonci will design a medley of veggie-based noodles, bean-based noodles, and entire wheat noodles to combine with pasta sauce. The noodle selection ensures that gamers are getting fewer refined carbs, and extra fiber and protein in comparison with regular pasta. 

Stir-fries: For stir-fry rice dishes, Bonci will use brown rice with only a small quantity of oil, however extra natural spices, herbs, and vinegars for added taste. 

Candy treats: Bonci makes dessert obtainable to the gamers, however she makes positive it is more durable to get to within the eating room. 

“If I need dessert, I form of must undergo a maze and discover it,” Bonci mentioned. “It is there, but it surely’s not entrance and heart, and that’s completely for a cause. You refill on all the opposite issues, after which when you’ve got room and also you need one thing, you go and get it, but it surely’s not essentially the precedence.”

“Apparently, the gamers will not be normally those that go and get the dessert, the teaching workers is,” she added.