Eat Like a Kenyan
Will a Kenyan Diet Help You Run Faster?
By Suzanne Girard Eberle
As featured in the October 2000 issue of Running Times Magazine
Whatever the venue—a road race, track meet or cross county run—do not bet against a Kenyan, or several Kenyans, finishing first. Kenyan runners are legendary for their unique ability to recover from daily bouts of strenuous training and to perform well when it really counts. Since it is impossible to train hard and race well without optimal nutrition, what role does diet play in the Kenyans’ success? And, more importantly, could eating like the Kenyans help you run fast too? 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.