The Kansas City Chiefs' lead dietitian explains how she sneaks nutrients into players' junk food, from fried chicken to pizza
Leslie Bonci has been the Kansas City Chiefs' lead dietitian since 2015.
Kansas City has made it to the 2023 Super Bowl after narrowly missing out the previous year.
One of Bonci's methods is to design a menu that has junk food, but with sneaky nutritional value.
The Kansas City Chiefs have made it to the 2023 Super Bowl after narrowly missing out the previous year. As one of the NFL's most successful teams of the past decade, Kansas City made the playoffs eight years in a row.
In each of those last eight years, the Chiefs' diet plan has been carefully curated by head dietitian Leslie Bonci.
Bonci is a 33-year veteran NFL dietitian. She spent the first 25 years of her career as a dietitian with the Pittsburgh Steelers, before joining the Chiefs in 2015.
One of Bonci's key responsibilities is working with the Chiefs' player foodservice and designing meals for the team dining room. Her objective is to make as many of the players chose to eat in-house food with their teammates, while still giving them nutrition geared to their physical demands as football players.
Most of the players eat breakfast and lunch in the canteen, and they have the option to stay for dinner or take a meal home Bonci told Insider. She gives food guidance for those who prefer to eat with their families, go out for dinner, or have a private chef.
"Having worked with the Steelers, one of their strength coaches was all about taking away foods that players liked, and that's not going to work. You know why? because they're going to go somewhere else, they're going to go to Five Guys, or they're going to go to Whataburger," Bonci said.
Being Kansas City, many of the players love BBQ food like burnt ends, wings, and mac and cheese, Bonci said, and these aren't off the menu.
Bonci said her method is to give players the option to eat food like pizza, burgers, fried chicken, and pasta, but to tweak them slightly to load up on essential nutrients and cut out unhealthy fats and sugars. Making healthy versions of foods that everyone loves, Bonci said, also encourages players to eat together, regardless of their personal approach to diet, which is good for team chemistry and morale.
"All those things are out there for guys to do what they want. Some have a really sophisticated palette, and others eat like a two-year-old," Bonci said. "That's OK, we can accommodate."
Bonci designs meals to fit three categories: "gaining plates" for those trying to put on muscle, "trimming plates" for those aiming to lose fat, and "healing plates" for those recovering from injury.
Bonci's small tweaks to junk food meals that make them a bit healthier for the players
Bonci has a go-to technique to add nutritional value to players' favorite meals that aren't always the healthiest.
Fried chicken: For one, fried chicken and other fried foods aren't deep-fried but rather air-fried. Air-frying chicken instead of deep-frying reduces the amount of sodium, cholesterol, and trans fat.
Pizza: For the team's pizzas, Bonci makes a thin whole-grain crust that contains ground-up beans. Adding beans to regular baked foods is one of her common tricks to feeding the players more protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. She will also put more lean chicken and vegetables as toppings for added protein and vitamins.
Pasta: For pasta dishes, Bonci will design a medley of veggie-based noodles, bean-based noodles, and whole wheat noodles to mix with pasta sauce. The noodle variety ensures that players are getting fewer refined carbs, and more fiber and protein compared to normal pasta. She sometimes blends zucchini into tomato sauce as a hidden vegetable.
Stir-fries: For stir-fry rice dishes, Bonci will use brown rice with just a small amount of oil, but more organic spices, herbs, and vinegars for added flavor.
Sweet treats: Bonci makes dessert available to the players, but she makes sure it's harder to get to in the dining room.
"If I want dessert, I kind of have to go through a maze and find it," Bonci said. "It's there, but it's not front and center, and that is absolutely for a reason. You fill up on all the other things, and then if you have room and you want something, you go and get it, but it's not necessarily the priority."
"Interestingly, the players are not usually the ones that go and get the dessert, the coaching staff is," she added.
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