When Jackie Berning walked into the Denver Broncos' training facility for the first time in the 1990s, nutrition was an afterthought for some of America's top athletes. Breakfast, if there was any, was a piece of toast. Lunch, for the Denver Broncos, was whatever the food trucks that pulled up to the team's building had on offer. 

"We used to call them 'roach coaches,'" she tells Yahoo. "They had all kinds of preprocessed, fried kinds of foods — not the healthier choice. But that's what they ate."  

It was a far cry from today's NFL, where teams may spend well into seven figures on food, dietitians and chefs each year, experts tell Yahoo. 

It's been a long road, but nutrition is now central to the success of football players and teams. I spoke to current and former NFL dietitians to learn just what it takes to fuel an NFL team, and why bison, banana ice cream and breakfast rice are key components. 

From toughing it out to fueling up  

When the league was founded in 1920, football wasn't a full-time job for most players — and they certainly didn't have additional benefits such as expertly planned meals. In fact, at the notoriously brutal training camps of the league's first several decades, some coaches treated thirst as a sign of weakness, rather than dehydration. "Forget your thirst until you've gotten in shape," Baltimore Colts coach Don Shula told players in the 1960s, according to Bleacher Report. 

But by the 1990s, when Berning was getting her start as a consulting dietitian for the NFL, the sport was a true, lucrative profession. Athletes' health was quite literally their wealth. Their nutrition, however, hadn't caught up. "My role was to say [to teams] … you're paying millions of dollars to these players to be the absolute best, but you're not fueling them," Berning says of her early days with the Broncos. What surprised Berning the most was that many athletes weren't eating breakfast. She instructed them to stop skipping the first meal of the day. 

"I always say, when we started feeding them breakfast, that's when they won two Super Bowl rings," Berning says. She's joking, but two of the Broncos' three wins in history — in 1998 and 1999 — came after she first consulted with the team. 

Upping the nutrition game 

Today, almost every organization has at least one full-time registered dietitian. But as recently as 2017, fewer than half did (though many worked with nutrition consultants), according to American Healthcare Leader (AHL). 

The push for better nutrition didn't come entirely from within the professional league. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) decided in 2014 to lift restrictions on the meals and snacks that schools could provide to student-athletes. It followed comments from University of Connecticut basketball player Shabazz Napier, who said he and his teammates would sometimes go to bed hungry because they couldn't afford to buy food. (The NCAA president at the time, Mark Emmert, said the rule change was long in the works and that the timing was purely a "coincidence.")

Colleges poured investment into their nutrition programs — to the tune of more than $1 million, in some cases, according to AHL. Formed in 2010, the nonprofit Collegiate and Professional Sports Dietitians Association (now known as the American Sports and Performance Dietitians Association, or ASPDA) pushed for better nutrition, including the change to the NCAA rule. 

Dallas Cowboys dietitian and director of sports performance Scott Sehnert credits the organization with catalyzing food-focused changes in the NFL (and he's not the only one). "The ASPDA really got their head start within the college setting," he tells Yahoo. "I think [there] was really a snowball effect into the professional side." 

Players transitioning from college to the NFL took note. A Cincinnati Bengals player who spoke with ESPN on the condition of anonymity told the outlet in 2024 that the team's dining options lacked the "diversity of what you can eat," in comparison to his Power 5 college team's offerings. That year, the Bengals received failing grades for their dietitian and food and cafeteria categories from the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) report card. 

"I suspect that these college players that came into the league that had such great nutrition support in college [weren't] receiving it in the professional setting," says Sehnert. As a result, they were "talking about it [and] they're asking for it," which may have motivated NFL teams to prioritize players' diets, he says.

Plus, as coaches and staffers moved on to other organizations, Sehnert suspects they brought ideas, including the importance of nutrition, with them.

Game meat, sneaky veggies and high-quality carbs: Modern NFL meals and snacks 

A cafeteria model is the only realistic way to feed roughly 75 players and more than 100 support staff members, says Sehnert. But this isn't your typical high school lunchroom. Variety, they say, is the spice of life, and when you're a defensive lineman who needs to eat upward of 6,000 calories a day to maintain size and strength, eating can get downright boring.

That's why NFL teams lean heavily on made-to-order stations, an ever-changing menu and "fun sauces" to keep meals interesting and full of choices, say Sehnert and Leslie Bonci, the Kansas City Chiefs' lead dietitian from 2014 until 2024. 

Breakfast 

Made-to-order egg stations are central. Players can ask for omelets, scrambles, breakfast wraps or eggs just about any way they'd like. "That keeps the excitement there, even though you're in the same facility six days a week," Bonci tells Yahoo. 

At the Cowboys' facility, ground bison is a surprising "big hit," says Sehnert, and it's now served at every breakfast. So is sticky rice, which was introduced a few years ago to meet the cultural needs of a Polynesian player. "I didn't think anybody [else] would like it, and now our team goes through more sticky rice than breakfast potatoes at breakfast," says Sehnert. He's all for it, because it's one of several "simple ways of adding a small amount of a carbohydrate, and then they have a greater source of energy at practice," he says. 

Breakfast sweets, especially those that contain some carbohydrates, aren't off-limits either. The Cowboys have pancakes available at breakfast, while the Chiefs, under Bonci, could grab a to-go cup of cereal (even the sugary kind), but the portions were small.

Lunch 

There's always a salad bar — "with every possible condiment and salad topping," says Sehnert — even if it's not every player's first stop, according to Bonci. 

The Cowboys' main buffet typically includes at least two vegetables, two starches, and two to three types of protein. The cafeteria is stocked with lean, low-fat ground proteins to help keep players in shape and protect their heart health over the long term. Players and staff can take what they want from there and bring it to the grill to have a beef or turkey burger, chicken wrap, grain bowl or stir-fry-style sauté made for them.

Sehnert and his team keep it simple, but find ways to sneak in extra nutrients. "We will sauté down a lot of mushrooms and onions and then basically blend it and add it back to a burger, meatball or meatloaf," Sehnert explains. (Parents, this might be a good way to covertly get some veggies into your picky eater's favorite foods.) 

 And yes, dessert is on the menu. Part of a sports dietitian's job is to "bring some excitement into the mix" for players eating many of their meals in the same place, and that includes sweet treats. "But most of them don't overindulge," Bonci shares. "It's not like, 'You can't have a brownie unless you eat your salad'— far be it for anybody else to tell them that." 

Dinner

Three meals a day are served at the Cowboys practice building, but dinner is the least well-attended. "When dinner starts, the workday ends for those players," says Sehnert. Older, more seasoned players are more likely to have spouses and kids at home to have dinner with, and, Bonci adds, a few players have their own personal chefs. 

But younger or more "transient" players are more likely to stick around for dinner, says Sehnert. Or, if they're ready to go home, the kitchens that Bonci and Sehnert have worked with are happy to provide food for them to take home, rather than leave players to fend for themselves at the grocery store or the fast food drive-through after a long day of practice. 

Snacks, supplements and special treats 

The menus are ever-evolving, and nutrition teams try to keep things interesting. Sehnert and the Cowboys' chefs meet weekly, and "we'll try to get cute once in a while and do some things that are somewhat regional to the area that we're going to play [in]," he says.

When I spoke to Sehnert, the Cowboys were preparing to travel to Indiana to take on the Colts. So the nutrition team planned to make bison chicken-fried steak, a spin on a typical heartland meal. "The guys have liked a lot of game meats, so we'll do venison, we'll do elk" and bison, routinely. 

Both Bonci and Sehnert said that, when it comes to snacks, they've really tried to home in on what particular players need and want to ensure the right bites are available. But Bonci also discovered some go-tos during her tenure with the Chiefs: homemade "squeezy pops," which are frozen treats made with real fruit, as well as energy balls and ice cream made with bananas, topped with cinnamon and peanut butter or chocolate peanut butter. "It's like a sundae, but you're actually eating fruit," Bonci says. 

Ensuring that players get enough fruit, vegetables and carbohydrates is a central part of a dietitian's job, both pros told me. And what the team needs from their nutrition shifts throughout the week, Sehnert explains. In the days immediately following a game, training is less intense, "so the need for fuel, which is carbohydrates, is not as high, but we've created a lot of damage to the body and there's inflammation and a natural need for more nutrients," he says. Wednesday through Friday, as training intensity picks up, so does the proportion of carbs and lean proteins on offer in the dining hall. 

NFL players, Sehnert says, are not immune to the ongoing protein craze, nor the fear of eating carbs. "They think that the carbs are just going to make them gain weight … or they'll try to add more protein to things," he explains. "Protein is absolutely necessary for someone to add lean body mass to their frame … but you ultimately need enough protein or calories, and carbs are the fuel for training."

Bonci says that she and her team at the Chiefs would sometimes give players who needed to gain mass protein shakes to take home. Other dietary supplements, however, are used pretty rarely. "The league is very staunch on what is allowed to be provided," says Sehnert. Players receive blood testing and can be given omega-3 or vitamin D supplements if they're deficient, "but it's rare," he adds. "There's so many shady products out there … so there's a lot of education around it." Some Cowboys players want nothing to do with supplements, but Sehnert notes that others "are looking at TikTok too much."

He says players have "a ton of questions" about supplements, nutrition trends and more, which he welcomes. "We try to educate them on what can be beneficial and what is really going to be a waste of their time and energy," Sehnert says.