Cheryl Zonkowski Provides Good Football Nutrition With a Protein Salad

Cheryl Zonkowski, University of Florida's director of sports nutrition, explains how to build a protein-packed salad.

Cheryl Zonkowski, University of Florida's Director of Sports Nutrition, shows how to build an appropriate salad for an athlete. This includes protein, a variety of vegetables, and low fat dressing.

TRANSCRIPT

Cheryl Zonkowski (Director of Sports Nutrition): Actually one of our topics in our morning breakfast club is how to construct a man salad, which helps our football team want to have salads as well. When we have our Man salad construction 101, at breakfast club, we get the athletes to consume whatever type of lettuce we prefer, although the healthier one is going to be the Spinach, and then to make sure they get at least two protein sources on their salad. So that can be a combination of any of the meats we have provided, the cheeses, the cottage cheese or the eggs, and then at least 3 different vegetables not including their lettuce. So that kind of forces them to get more variety on there. So they can go your kind of typical Tomato, Cucumber, maybe green peppers or onions, or they could be out there and try something a little bit difference and go with something like Broccoli. Or they can go the citrus route and get Cantaloupe, Watermelon, slice up some strawberries with Mandarin Oranges and then go with the Balsamic Vinaigrette and have a fruity salad. But the Man salad main composition is three different vegetables; not including your lettuce, making sure you do have a lettuce, trying to get at least two protein sources on your salad and then picking a dressing. The ones that we provide here are all light or low fat. So here you're pretty safe. And if they were constructing it at our regular dining facility or at any restaurant , something that, like I said, pours really easily, closer to water and is almost kind of clear.