Eat Like a Kenyan

Will a Kenyan Diet Help You Run Faster?

Nutrition Facts

Kenyan food is remarkably basic: small amounts of roasted meat, cooked greens, fruit, milk and, always, ugali, a thick, polenta-style cornmeal porridge. Made from water and maize (corn), which is traditionally ground by hand into flour, ugali serves as the national dish of East Africa (click here for recipe). Bland and tasteless by itself, Kenyans eat ugali daily, typically as a base for a meat stew and thinned with milk or water into a thin gruel for breakfast. Unappetizing as it might sound to you, Kenyans love it. Lisa Buster, who manages a host of Kenyan runners, including two-time New York City Marathon winner John Kagwe and Boston Marathon winner Catherine Ndereba, can attest to ugali’s lure. "After my runners have been away a day or two to a race," says Buster, "I can hardly get them back from the airport quickly enough so they can have ugali."

Ugali’s central role makes the typical Kenyan diet rich in carbohydrates and very low in fat. The emphasis on dark green leafy vegetables, such as collard greens and kale, fruit, and milk, provides ample amounts of key nutrients: folic acid, vitamins A and C, iron and calcium. Small servings of meat and several glasses of whole milk (consumed in hot tea) provide quality protein and a small amount of fat. Hard-training athletes consciously keep added fat to a minimum, primarily supplied by small amounts of vegetable oil used in cooking.

Mike Kibe, a promising young Kenyan runner living in the United States, provides an inside look into the Kenyans’ typical eating habits. "We basically eat two meals a day: lunch and dinner," Kibe explains, "unless someone is training three times a day to get in shape. That runner will have something easily digested, such as bread and butter or two boiled eggs, following the first early morning run, so they will be ready to go again a few hours later. Otherwise, we’ll drink tea made with lots of milk and sugar before and after our first workout, as well as fruit [following the run] to settle our stomachs."

Lunch consists of more tea (one to two large cups), and a "light" meal of rice or potatoes topped with cabbage and other vegetables, as well as a few pieces of chicken. If hungry in between meals, runners reach for more fruit—as no snack or sweet foods are kept in the house. Following the day’s second training session, the runners look forward to a late dinner of generous portions of ugali, topped with a vegetable stew of sauteed greens and small pieces of beef. "At dinner we eat to repair our body tissues," Kibe shares, "as the body must have back what it lost. You must eat enough to have enough energy to train tomorrow—and that does not come from a spoonful of food.

Tidbits to Ponder

Like most runners, the Kenyans also strive to balance the calories they consume with those burned off in training. Blessed with physiques perfectly suited for long-distance running, they nevertheless display a great deal of mental fortitude when it comes to their weight. "It is not uncommon for a runner to gain 20 to 30 pounds during the off-season," says Kibe, "but this allows us to come back with a new focus. The weight comes off little by little by doing extra work, such as running three times a day." Spurred on by the desire to keep up with fellow Kenyans here and back in Africa, U.S.-based Kenyan runners stick with familiar low-fat foods and only treat themselves occasionally, such as dining on fast food once a month. "Nothing is bad when you eat it with discipline," stresses Kibe, "but we eat to help our training, not like there is no tomorrow."

John Manners, a writer who has lived in Kenya and coached school boys there in the 1970’s, has a different take on the subject, looking at the availability of food rather than the day-to-day nutritional value of the Kenyan diet. "Compared to the rest of Africa and the rest of the Third World, Kenya is a very agriculturally rich country," says Manners. "While Kenyans certainly lead a hardy life, the key is not the nature of the calories they consume, but that they consume adequate [amounts] from childhood." In other words, given enough calories, the Kenyans would still run fast no matter how that energy was allotted. "Most Kenyans like Western food when it’s offered," observes Manners. That said, he adds, "But they stick to ugali because they believe in it. They may also feel it’s extravagant to eat American food, because they know how far that money can go when sent back home."

Food for Thought

While it is unlikely that most of us will develop a taste for ugali or a desire to celebrate our birthday with a Philly cheese steak, as Philadelphia based Kenyans reportedly do because birthday cake tastes too sweet, we can still benefit from incorporating pieces of the dietary roadmap that Kenyan runners follow. We can be like the Kenyans by eating carbohydrate-rich foods to fuel training sessions. By limiting the amount of processed, packaged and pre-cooked foods that we eat. By snacking on fruit and saving less healthy treats for special occasions.

Recipe for Ugali (Be forewarned, it is definitely an acquired taste!)

Ingredients:
Maize (white corn flour--see Note below)
Water
Salt (optional)

Put 1 cup of cold water in a medium-size saucepan, and mixing continually, add 1 cup of flour and 1 teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil over high heat and slowly mix in 3 cups of boiling water. Reduce to simmer, cover and cook for about 5 to 8 minutes, mixing frequently to prevent sticking. The ugali is done when it pulls from the sides of the pan and does not stick. The finished product should look like stiff grits. Serve with vegetable beef broth, cream, sugar, syrup or melted butter poured over it.

Note: The type of flour used--from white corn flour to yellow cornmeal--determines the character of the ugali.