Cauliflower provides healthy spin on football’s favorite snack

With college football season here, tailgating parties are happening and big screen TVs are blaring games every weekend. With all the cheering, groaning, complaining about the referees and arguing about whose team is best, comes plenty of eating and drinking.

Football party food is best when it can be hand held or balanced while still keeping your eyes on the game, which is why finger foods, sliders and bite-sized items are popular. While some of these items can be nutritious and healthy, many of them are not. There are also often many meat-based dishes included in the array of foods offered, and too few vegetable items included. With so much research showing that plant foods, and especially vegetables, are vital for our optimal health, it’s time to change the balance and include more of these every opportunity we can, even at celebratory occasions such as tailgate parties.

I’m not suggesting that you quit grilling or including some of your go-to company dishes, but adding some other vegetable options that are delicious, tasty and can be eaten with your fingers, is a great way to get more of this nutritious food group on the table, even when in party mode.

Buffalo wings are a very popular tailgating or football party food. Made from chicken wings, which are one of the higher fat parts of the chicken, these morsels are often coated with spices and doused with a mixture of hot sauce and butter, then baked. Some wings are fried first, then coated and baked. While tasty, each wing can contain between 120-170 calories. Since they are small, it is easy to eat five, six or more of these, which can add up to a very significant amount of calories.

Today’s recipe is a take on buffalo chicken wings, but uses cauliflower instead of chicken as the main ingredient, which adds nutrients and subtracts calories. While there is a little butter, mixed with the hot sauce coating, it isn’t very much, and adds only a few calories per serving.

You might think it is strange to be eating cauliflower instead of chicken, but the seasonings and spicy coating give you that lip smacking kick we enjoy with regular buffalo style chicken. Plus, you’ll get fiber and a healthy serving of quality nutrients as well.

Cauliflower is part of the cabbage family, a group of vegetables that have a strong nutrition lineage. One cup of cooked cauliflower provides 73% of the RDA for vitamin C, great for our immune system and skin. Vitamin C also acts as an antioxidant, along with some other phytonutrients in cauliflower, including beta carotene, quercetin, rutin and kaempferol. These antioxidants help prevent cell damage, lowering our risk for cancer.

Cauliflower is also an excellent source of vitamin K, which, in addition to acting as a blood thinner, also plays a role in decreasing inflammation of our blood vessels. 5.