Are You Ready for Some Football?

Super Bowl XLIV, February 7, 2010
New Orleans Saints v. Indianapolis Colts

Pass me a Tums, please. Super Bowl comes in as the second biggest day for Americans to overeat, the first is Thanksgiving.

We torture our poor bodies with food from Halloween through Valentine’s Day and all 8 of those holidays revolve around food and lots of it. The mere act of researching and writing all this makes me feel like a lot of sausage stuffed into a small casing. But, back to Super Bowl, not yet a designated holiday although I did find a website promoting making it one.

If you are going to watch the game with friends, think and act, moderation, think of all you have lost in pounds and gained in lifestyle wisdom and health.
· Take a walk after the half time show.
· Drink lots of water and reach for veggie sticks.
· Jumping up and down cheering (or shouting at the TV) is a good form of exercise while watching the game.
· Stand up and move during the commercials, I won’t say leave the room, after all, the commercials are a big part of the Super Bowl experience!
· As I wrote before the winter holidays (November 19, 2009 blog), eat a low fat protein snack before you leave the house.
· Super Bowl is about friends and fun and I bet no one will mind if you even brought your own healthy snacks.
· Moderation is the key.

Here are a few statistics on some of the favorite foods served at Super Bowl parties. I can’t vouch for 100% accuracy of the numbers but found enough similarities that I will use them.

Holy Guacamole!

· 8 million pounds of guacamole consumed during Super Bowl,
· Haas Avocado Board says 49.5 million pounds of avocados
· The California Avocado Commission reports 13.2 million pounds of avocado - or approximately 26 million individual avocados.
· That’s enough guacamole to “cover the Louisiana Superdome football field, end zone to end zone, waist deep in guacamole (approximately 40 inches)." From bleacherreport.com
Chips
· 14,500 – 15,000 tons of chips consumed during Super Bowl
· “To take these out of rational perspective, lining up each and every chip would produce a trail of almost 293,000 miles (not quite 1.5 times the distance to the moon, or 6 feet per American).” From bleacherreport.com
· 4,000 tons of popcorn consumed

Beer

Beer and Super Bowl are a fact of life, apologies to those teetotalers out there. I was not able to find hard and fast statistics on how much beer is consumed during Super Bowl. I did find this information:
· Super Bowl is credited for January being one of America’s top months of beer consumption.
· There is an approximate $17.9 million dollars increase in spending on beer in weeks leading up to Super Bowl. From marketing-jive.com

Wings

· It is estimated that Americans will eat 90 million pounds of chicken wings that breaks down to 450 million individual wings!
· There was no mention of how much ranch dressing is consumed with those wings, I would guess, a lot.

Pizza

· Pizza statistics were available from 3 chains, one of which is a take and bake: over 3 million pizzas are ordered for Super Bowl.
· This does not include the multitude of chains and independent restaurants who were not asked for statistics.

“I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”
Alka Seltzer commercial
· 20% increase in antacid sales the Monday after Super Bowl

Overindulged?

Here’s how many times you need to cross the football field to burn off calories, and you are not being paid millions of dollars to do it!
· Eat one little M&M candy and you are walking the full length of a football field to burn it off.
· The small-sized bag of M&M's (with 53 M&M's ) is 53 football fields.
· A can of Budweiser Beer is 36 football fields.
· A Snickers Bar – 54 football fields.
· A slice of pizza- 80 football fields.
From: Walking off Weight by Robert Sweetgall


Enjoy the game, enjoy yourself, enjoy being with your friends. Try not to overindulge and if you do, don’t beat yourself up. Get up on Monday and realize it is a new day with a fresh page and don’t look back.

Calories Count

Chicken wings 1 fried
25
Chicken wings 1 regular
21
1 slice meat lovers thick crust pizza
350
Guacamole, pre-made 2 TBS
60
Tortilla chips (1 oz = appx 12 chips)
142
Regular beer 12 oz
138.8
Light beer 12 oz
102.7
Potato chips (1 oz =appx 20 chips)
150
Ranch dressing 2 TBS
120
Baby carrot 1 medium
3.8
Celery stick (4”)
0.6
Broccoli spear (5”)
8.7
Apple, 1 cup slices
64.9
Pineapple, 1 slice fresh (3.5” diameter, ¾” thick)
41.2
Grapes 1 cup seedless
60
Light yogurt fruit dip 4 TBS
90
2 Extra strength antacid tablets
10
Sources: marketing-jive.com, bleacherreport.com, About.com, Sparkpeople.com