By Andrew Davis
Russ Klettke actually had me doing something no man had coerced me to do: cook. Normally, when it comes to food, the only things I make are reservations. However, I've been converted.
How many times have you thought about being Wolfgang Puck—only to pick up a meal from a fast-food restaurant on your way home from work? Well, a delicious, nutritious meal is only a few minutes away, thanks to the concepts and receipts highlighted in Klettke's tome A Guy's Gotta Eat.
I recently sat (and cooked) with Klettke at his home, where we discussed everything from the disadvantages of the Atkins plan to the merits of Diet Pepsi.
Windy City Times: Why write this book?
Russ Klettke: I saw a lot of people struggling—and you see this all the time—with understanding what nutrition is and what they're supposed to eat. In particular, people are confused with diet books and [concepts] like high-carb-this, low-carb-that, high-fat-this, etc. I've accumulated knowledge from different places, professionally and personally. Although I lack a dietician's credentials, I have worked in the food industry. I also have an interest in food and I am a triathlete so I watch what I eat. I looked around and said 'Wait a minute! This is crazy. Everyone is making it look a lot harder than it is.'
I thought I had something to share—and the more research I did, the more I realized that I needed to write this book for men. Men are caught in a funny place in our society. We are getting fatter faster than women—and men in their 20s today are getting fatter than baby boomers did in their 20s.
WCT: Why do you think that is?
RK: Well, there are many reasons. I can only address why I think they eat badly; there's a whole side of the equation that has to do with physical activity in this culture that's designed to avoid work.
Processed foods are much more present in today's diet. High-school-aged boys have replaced the milk kids drank in the 1970s with sugared sodas.
Also, the media and books that focus on nutrition make [eating right] seem like a Herculean task. For example, [people] may feel that they need a degree in chemistry to cook. Let me tell you—I didn't even take high-school chemistry. It's not as hard as people make it seem. You see the recipes in the Chicago Tribune that have 25 ingredients and that take 3 hours, so people just give up. In fact, there are a lot of easy and cheap ways to make good meals that taste better than fast food.
WCT: How cheap?
RK: Well, I figured that the average cost for a dinner is $6.44—for a healthy, balanced dinner.
You can spend close to that with fast food and not get close to the same number of nutrients.
WCT: Why did you cater this book solely to guys?
RK: In publishing, you need to address a specific audience and I felt for the reasons just cited that men are missing a [major] thing: how to make food for themselves. I saw that healthy cooking is a very doable thing—even for someone with a partial high-school education. (Laughs)
WCT: At one point, you highlight the differences between men and women in this book. For example, guys can think multidimensionally [while women think in other ways]. Did you do that to motivate guys?
RK: Well, that chapter [with the differences] was meant to be fun. I just stumbled into some research that showed why men might have an advantage in this area. What I thought was funny was a study that showed that when a kindergarten class was instructed what to eat and what not to eat, girls were more likely to break the rules than boys.
Another study showed that women tend to look exclusively at a food product's calories and fat content, where men will consider other nutrient components as well. These are generalizations, of course. The main point was to help guys see that they're in the game, contrary to popular perceptions.
WCT: Could you describe the four main parts of this book?
RK: Sure. There are four sections: Get Smart, Get Equipped, Get to Work, and Get Outta the House. Get Smart is really about understanding, on a very basic level, how nutrition works. It's about how your stomach works and how food works. Diet books often overlook the complexity of the human body and how we evolved to become omnivores (organisms that eat plants and animals). As a side note, I respect vegetarians, but [vegetarianism] looks like a very challenging lifestyle. It's hard to get protein from only plants. It's not impossible, but it's hard.
Another part of getting smart is knowing how your stomach works. We now know that snacking is a good idea. We know that protein and fat are digested more slowly than simple sugars. When you digest things more slowly, you're less likely to feel hungry in an hour or two. So snacking on processed-grain products like cookies, crackers, muffins, and chips is a bad strategy. You've heard the whole thing about Chinese food, right? Well, the white rice in those dishes is digested quickly because it's a simple carbohydrate.
I tend to have something like peanut butter and celery before I go to the gym. What's so beautiful about that is that peanut butter has a lot of good fats and protein. Combined with the fibrous celery, that satisifes my appetite for several hours, enough to power me through a workout.
Understanding nutrition enhances your life. You're able to make better decisions whether you're at a restaurant, party, or grocery store. You understand the way food works.
The section called Get Equipped is all about making the home your fast, healthy-food castle. If you are hungry and have no food in the house, you either go out or order in—and, I don't know about you, but with me a pizza usually takes about 45 minutes to get here. If I really want to eat fast, I can eat peanut butter and celery in about 12 seconds ... or I can fix some quick dish with garbanzo beans, lemon juice, and pepper. Getting Equipped involves getting the right utensils and basic ingredients.
Get to Work is where you make some meals—and these meals are delicious and quick to make.
The last section is Get Outta the House. Americans spend 50 percent of their food dollars out of the home. A lot of people, especially single folks, eat two to three meals a daily in restaurants [or elsewhere] and single men skew much higher in total caloric consumption. If you're going to eat out, it's better that you make the smartest choices possible.
WCT: So it's possible to make the right decision if you go to McDonald's?
RK: There are better decisions than others. But here's a number to chew on: the American Dietetic Association found that people consume 55 percent more calories outside the home than inside.
I think of McDonald's as a 'snack patch'—when a plain hamburger, salad, or low-fat yogurt parfait sustains me until I can find a full, balanced meal.
WCT: How do you handle cravings? Sometimes you just have to have that pizza.
RK: I have a whole chapter on vices. If you have a vice, pay attention to it because it may be something that you need to address. People who have ice cream after dinner every night and gain weight have to connect the dots. I'm not saying cut out the ice cream entirely; just do the math. Maybe you can cut back to having it three nights a week instead of eating it every night. There are even great substitutes for ice cream.
WCT: Do you have a favorite cuisine?
RK: Hmmm ... I was raised in a German home so I ate things that had vinegar in them. I like vinegar, which isn't a cuisine per se, but a taste. I also tend to eat a lot of cabbage. The more I play with cabbage, the more I love it. Cabbage has [a high amount of] fiber and antioxidants, is amazingly versatile, and keeps for weeks. However, taste is personal, and there's a whole chapter dedicated to understanding that (e.g., not serving cabbage on a first at-home dinner date).
WCT: There's a chapter in your book called 'A Guy's Gotta Be a Caveman.' What's that about?
RK: That is basically about understanding our evolution from the pre-agrarian (or pre-farmer) era to the time where we became growers to about 100 years ago, when processed foods became mass-produced.
WCT: Can you give me a couple of myths that this book dispels?
RK: Number one: Cooking is hard. Number two: Eating smart means deprivation.
WCT: The book itself is based loosely on the Zone diet, right?
RK: Right. The Zone diet is based on the caveman theory we talked about earlier. The Atkins diet is also based on that theory, somewhat—but I want to go on record: I don't think the Atkins diet is a good idea at all. It discounts the importance of plant foods and the danger of saturated fats. There are nutrients that you get from grains that you can't get anywhere else.
WCT: Some people argue that it's not good because you can lose weight and still be unhealthy.
RK: You're absolutely right. Weight reduction doesn't necessarily equal health. Atkins also has a high failure rate because it requires a certain degree of deprivation. The beautiful thing about these diets, though, is that they all [emphasize] reduced processed foods and reduced processed carbohydrates. However, I say that you should not let go of those plant foods; they have over 900 antioxidants in them.
WCT: From what I've read, Chicagoans in particular need a lot of help.
RK: Yeah. Chicago is the second fattest city in the country, behind Houston.
WCT: Why do you think that is?
RK: Again, that gets into some things that I'm not an expert in—such as sedentary lifestyles. Some say that the weather keeps us in; I disagree that [staying in] is inevitable. [Gestures toward his balcony] I've used that bike out there in the past 24 hours. I personally believe that you must stay physically active as part of a health- and weight-management scheme.
We're in the middle of the food belt, you know? The food industry is a big presence in this town—plus we have Wisconsin with all the cheese right down the road.
WCT: [Switching gears,] it seems that you're writing this book from a straight man's perspective—yet you're openly gay. For instance, there are a couple points where you write about'chicks' and 'impressing your wife.'
RK: It was not my intention to write from the perspective of [one type of guy]. The book is for men and 10 percent of men are gay. There are two times in the book where the gay reader is acknowledged. Maybe we should have a contest called 'Find the gay parts.' The fact is that digestive systems don't have a sexual orientation.
If you put my name in Google, you're gonna find out I'm gay real fast. I'm with the Human Rights Campaign and I've competed in the Gay Games three times. The only thing that bothers me is that you can see how lousy my swim times were in Sydney [for Gay Games VI in 2002].
WCT: Well, I was simply curious. The title of the book isn't A Gay Guy's Gotta Eat or Queer Eye for the Stir Fry.
RK: [Laughs] Yeah. No one should feel excluded. Besides, I think that angle is being milked by someone else.
WCT: What was the most surprising bit of info you found when researching?
RK: The most interesting things involved math. I'm not by nature a calorie-counter but my collaborator, dietitian Deanna Conte, showed me how simple changes can affect your life. If you switch from a daily routine of four cans of regular Pepsi to four cans of Diet Pepsi, you'll lose 10 pounds in three months (and 41 pounds in a year)—all other things being equal. Although I just mentioned that, I'm not that comfortable talking exclusively about weight. It seems that it's more important for people to focus not on their weight but on what foods they're eating and what benefits they get from those foods. Read the book and focus on structuring your life in a different way.
WCT: Speaking of Deanna, what were her contributions to this book?
RK: Deanna was incredibly valuable. I initially saw her as someone with all this technical knowledge and she corrected parts of the book where I had incorrect information. However, she was also very reinforcing in my approach, which involves making little changes that push you in the right direction. She was also very good at alerting me to peoples' sensitivities about their weight and state of health. She stressed that there are really smart people who just haven't been paying attention to nutrition. Good health is not a function of education; it's a function of your interest area.
WCT: What do you want people to get out of this book?
RK: I want people to improve their health for the long term—and I believe that [following this book] is the way to do it. To a certain extent, you can control what happens to your health by eating right.
A Guy's Gotta Eat, in bookstores, including Women & Children First, Unabridged Books (which has many signed copies), and Borders.
Andrew Davis's e-mail is westelm406@yahoo.com .
