Healthy Choices

NOTE: The Tiger Bites feature first appeared in the Memphis Football GameDay program Sept. 7

Welcome to Tiger Bites, a game show sweeping the Memphis Athletics Department. It's fun, involves healthy eating choices and includes an educational component.

A game show about education on eating healthy being fun?

"The most exciting result we got was: 'Did you enjoy the process?', and it got a 9.4 out of 10 on average," said Dr. Daniel Greenwood, Director of Sports Performance and Health Consulting Center in the School of Health Studies. "Not only we did see a change in body shape, education knowledge and food behavior, but they enjoyed the process which is what most of these education pieces lack."
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Greenwood, along with Didactic Program in Dietetics Director Mary Catherine Schallert and Campus Recreation Nutrition Coordinator Deidra Nelson, joined forces with the volleyball team to show how good nutrition not only could be fun, but also how it could literally affect the student-athletes' on-the-court performance.

"It was shockingly successful," Greenwood said. "We did physical tests on jump height and maintenance of jump height over a minute, total fat mass and total muscle mass. On average, the players added two inches to their jump height over six weeks. They also lost, on average, over three percent body fat and put on over two percent muscle mass. We saw physical changes and also saw huge changes in their educational numbers."

Tiger Bites was always a two-pronged study from the start, according to volleyball head coach Sean Burdette.

"We're always trying to find edges or do things differently that sets us apart from other programs," Burdette said. "We looked at the nutrition aspect and how we can get a little better performance, while also giving our players a map, a guide how to prepare their meals. We want them to make good nutritional choices to prepare for practice, strength and conditioning, being at their best all the time."

The test run for the program, which also received major input from Associate Athletics Director Marlon Dechausay, was held last spring. Greenwood, Schallert and Nelson met with the team weekly and helped the players learn how to put together healthy meals, snacks, pregame and postgame food items.

There, however, was a little anxiousness from the players on two fronts when the program started. The first: eating new foods.

"One of the first things we had to overcome was trying different foods," Greenwood said. "We encouraged everyone to have a bite of something. For example, we had a tart cherry juice smoothie for recovery, and a couple of the players hated it because of its sour taste. We replaced it. It shows them that because something doesn't taste right doesn't mean the food is bad. We can tweak it to give it your flavor."

The next obstacle to overcome was the actual preparation of meals since most of the players had never done it.

"Initially, there was apprehension because some of them never had fully prepared meals so their knife skills weren't up to par," said Burdette. "That was another great piece on the teaching part of it. It was a ground-up, building-block experience that helped our players acquire a new skill set."

Greenwood added, "We mixed in the coaches with the players to make it a safe place to ask questions. We deliberately put in the game shows as quickly as we could so they were forced to think about food from the start."

Greenwood and his associates developed the game show part of the program to add some fun. In doing so, it helped the players reveal honest answers on their eating habits.
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"The beauty of the game show is this: you press a buzzer and you have to give an answer. We're finding out the truth immediately," Greenwood said. "We did this in place of a group discussion where some are nervous to speak. We played Family Feud style games, game shows that encouraged learning without realizing you're learning."

Another beauty of the program Greenwood is it empowers the student-athletes to take control of what they eat instead of being told what to eat.

"We wanted to steer away from the traditional model of sitting in a room with a power-point presentation of what you should eat," said Greenwood. "If you just want to feed your team, you can do that. Instead, we're trying to change people's lives. This is more than just helping these athletes just jump higher. This gives the athletes ownership of it rather than being given hand-fed answers, hand-fed solutions, hand-fed food.

"By doing this, we had them in the kitchen cooking, played game shows while they were cooking so they would learn about fueling themselves as athletes without it being boring education."

And, the winning dish of the Tiger Bites' final cook-off?

"We had a Mexican-themed dish of seasoned strip steak with a mixed side of avocado, red peppers, salsa, lime and beans," said Hannah Flowers, who teamed with Adjuwa Osborne. "It was yummy."

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