TAMRON HALL reporting:
This morning on
EAT SMART TODAY
, battling
belly fat
.
Liz Vaccariello
is the woman behind the best-selling "Flat Belly Diet!" and now she's out with the "Flat Belly Diet! Family Cookbook," boasting 150 recipes to flatten your
belly
and
teach your children
to eat healthier.
Liz
, good morning. Thanks for coming on.
Ms. LIZ VACCARIELLO ("Flat Belly Diet! Family Cookbook"):
Good morning. Happy to be here.
HALL:
The last time I saw you, we were talking about the men's flat
belly
diet.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Mm-hmm.
HALL:
You tackled women and now families. What inspired this?
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Well, parents just like me who are trying to
lose weight
and eat healthy and also have a
family
to feed.
HALL:
Mm-hmm.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Either your kids are complaining because they're eating bland
diet food
, or you're making them gourmet meals and eating out of a
cardboard box
or some frozen entree.
HALL:
Right.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
So the
Flat Belly Diet Family
philosophy is that you don't have to sacrifice your own health...
HALL:
Yeah.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
...and your own
weight loss
goals just because you're cooking...
HALL:
And that makes great sense.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
...for the
family
. Right.
HALL:
Because you
think about it
, I imagine that would last for a few days, you eating out of the
cardboard box
and making dinner for the
family
...
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
It's not a long-term solution.
HALL:
...but it's not long term.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
It's not long term. And these are
family
-proof recipes, they're crowd-pleasing recipes. We have spaghetti and meatballs and pizza and all that.
HALL:
Oh, those are crowd pleasers.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Right. And also things that you can stick in your kid's
lunch boxes
or feed three generations around a table.
HALL:
But there are three
golden
rules you need to follow, as with the other diet.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Right. Right. There are three rules. The first one is that you eat a
MUFA
at every meal.
HALL:
Mm-hmm.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
A MUFA is a
monounsaturated fatty acid
, and these are the healthy oils found in plant foods.
HALL:
OK.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Meet your new
best friends
. The
MUFAs
are oils...
HALL:
Right.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
...so
olive oil
, nuts and seeds, almonds, peanut,
peanut butter
...
HALL:
Uh-huh.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
...olives, and olive tapenade is part of it. Avocado is the fourth
MUFA
.
HALL:
Yeah.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
And
dark chocolate
is the fifth
MUFA
. And there is science that shows eating a small portion of
MuFA
every meal targets
belly fat
specifically.
HALL:
But even in kids? I mean, should
children
not be worried about
belly fat
?
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Well, that's exactly right. We --
belly fat
is dangerous in
children
. One study -- parents are going to be shocked because one study found that even that waist circumference...
HALL:
Mm-hmm.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
...has a direct correlation to higher cholesterol and
high blood pressure
in kids as young as three.
HALL:
Wow.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Now I am not advocating that you put
children
on a diet...
HALL:
Right.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
...but the whole
Flat Belly Diet Family
philosophy is that you're eating healthy foods...
HALL:
Healthier. Yeah, the diet is about eating healthy, not about
losing weight
. Right.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
...at every -- and meanwhile, you're having these
MUFAs
at every meal and you're targeting your
belly fat
.
HALL:
OK, we want -- we want to look at some of the recipes because of all of these things, I could see kids liking the chocolate...
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Oh, yeah.
HALL:
...but the others may be a
hard sell
. So the first option you have is for breakfast, and this is?
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
This is a chocolate-stuffed
French toast
.
HALL:
Sold.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
This is -- my five-year-olds love this.
HALL:
Mm.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
And the secret here -- obviously we love
dark chocolate
for breakfast, but you're using
Neufchatel cheese
, which is like a
cream cheese
, but it has one-third the fat. So yes, you can have bread, you can have cheese, you can have chocolate. This is a 400-calorie breakfast.
HALL:
And the bread -- because I always thought that bread goes
straight
to your tummy...
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
No.
HALL:
...that that's what gives you the
belly
.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
No. Because you have the specific portion of
dark chocolate
in the recipe...
HALL:
Uh-huh.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
...you're actually
losing weight
because it's a 400-calorie meal...
HALL:
OK.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
...and the -- and the
MUFA
is targeting your
belly fat
.
HALL:
And every meal should be under -- around 400...
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Under 400 calories. Yeah.
HALL:
OK. And this is very interesting, I think this -- kids would love this as well.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Yeah. This is all about
peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches, but it's a new twist on it.
Peanut butter
's very healthy, it's one of the
MUFAs
...
HALL:
Right.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
...it's why people love the diet.
HALL:
Uh-huh.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
But there can be a lot of
sugar
in the jelly.
HALL:
Sure.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
And so what we did was we sliced strawberries and wrapped it in a whole wheat wrap. Kids love that we stick this in the
lunch box
.
HALL:
It's finger, you can
pick it up
and go. Right.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
It's
finger food
, it looks kind of cool.
HALL:
Mm-hmm. It does look cool.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Yeah.
HALL:
And it looks tasty actually. I was curious about that when I saw the recipe.
HALL:
And then
french fries
.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Oh,
french fries
!
HALL:
You saved the
french fry
.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Yeah. I mean, what kind of -- this is what my
family
eats, they eat
french fries
and
peanut butter
and jelly.
HALL:
That's what
everyone loves. Right.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
These are oven-fried
salt and pepper
fries.
HALL:
Uh-huh.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
And you're going to be tossing them with a
little
olive oil
and roasting them for
30 minutes
in the oven.
HALL:
So the key is the roasting, that keeps it from, you know...
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Yeah. Yeah. And the -- and the
olive oil
is the
MUFA
. And then you toss it with some
salt and pepper
and garlic. These are going to go fast.
HALL:
OK, I'm drooling, I am drooling looking at the
french fries
. And next up, this is a nice lunch or something for dinner even.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
This is a shrimp taco.
HALL:
And
everybody loves
tacos. Kids, again, love tacos.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Everyone loves tacos, but oftentimes you're going to be breading some of the meat or frying it.
HALL:
Yeah.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
And what we did is we pan-seared the shrimp...
HALL:
Uh-huh.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
...in a
little
olive oil
and then put the
MUFA
, which is avocado, on it as the condiment.
HALL:
OK.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
You can have two of these tacos for 320 calories.
HALL:
Yeah. How many kids do you have?
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Two.
HALL:
Was it
hard to get
them to eat avocado?
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
No. They love avocado.
HALL:
Really?
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
They love avocado. And plus, you're pairing it -- you're always pairing it with a
family
-friendly food.
HALL:
OK.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
So in this case, it's tacos, taco night,
family
taco night.
HALL:
Right, right, right. So they're like, `Oh, it's taco night.'
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Yeah.
HALL:
`I'm not picturing this
green stuff
, I'm just going to try it.'
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Right.
That's right
.
HALL:
OK.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
All of these recipes have been tested on my five-year-old
girls
.
HALL:
All right. And then you can say, `If you don't eat your tacos, you can't get this!'
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
You can't get dessert.
HALL:
Which is?
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
This is -- this is the essence of the
Flat Belly Diet
.
HALL:
Mm-hmm.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
It's a
way of living
, it's a lifestyle and not a diet
per se
. And so people eat dessert and people want fudgy
chocolate brownies
.
HALL:
Yeah. It's comforting.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
We put whole raspberries in these.
HALL:
Mm.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
These -- one of these brownies is 170 calories, so you can have one with a glass of milk and that's one of your flat
belly
diet meals.
HALL:
OK.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
Or you can have two for dessert.
HALL:
That's perfect. And all of these, again, have the
MUFA
that you need...
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
They have the
MUFA
. You're...
HALL:
...to help flatten the
belly
.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
You're eating the
belly
-flattening
MUFAs
.
HALL:
All right. Pretty good.
Ms. VACCARIELLO:
You can lose up to 15 pounds in up to 32 days.
HALL:
Lovely.
Thank you very much
,
Liz
. It's great to
see you again
. And the book is "Fat Belly Diet! Family Cookbook."
Liz Vaccariello
, thank you again. And we are back in a moment. This is
TODAY
on
NBC
.
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