Book Review: The Feedzone Cookbook (Fast and Flavorful Food for Athletes)

Book Review: The Feedzone Cookbook (Fast and Flavorful Food for Athletes) by Dr. Allen Lim and Biju Thomas

Who would know how to better feed hungry athletes than the chef and scientist who nourished the pro cyclists during the Tour de France?  Dr. Allen Lim and chef Biju Thomas share 160 of their energy-packed, wholesome recipes with elite and non-elite athletes alike in this amazing cookbook.

With recipes targeted specifically with food timing in mind: pre-workout, workout, and post-workout, this book covers it all using common ingredients such as rice, eggs, sugar and salt.  There are also many vegan and gluten-free recipe options.

Many of these recipes are designed to fuel hard-working athletes with high-calorie demands, and hence are unapologetically low-fat or low-calorie.  Lim and Thomas also encourage readers to use their recipes only as a foundation and to freely experiment with different ingredients to find out what works best for the individual athlete.

My favorite section of this book was the “portables,” which were originally designed to give riders an alternative to pre-packaged bars and food. Lim and Thomas discovered that after consuming only sweet, dense energy bars, cyclists would develop a bad stomach, or as they refer to it as, “gut rot.” This led to the birth of the infamous “Allen’s rice cakes” which are made from a mixture of calrose white rice (easily digested carbs), scrambled eggs, (protein), bacon (provides fat and a savory flavor), brown sugar and soy sauce.

Personally, I’ve been using Accelerade gels and ClifBar shot blocks for years to fuel me on the bike and run, so my tastebuds were yearning for something different- something sweet and savory- like Allen’s rice cakes.

I’m not a huge fan of bacon, so I opted to test out the Levi Leipheimer-approved Chicken Apple Sausage rice cakes. The ingredients were simple- calrose rice, chicken apple sausage, eggs, brown sugar and low-sodium soy sauce.

I scrambled the eggs and cooked the chicken apple sausage together with the seasonings.

Afterwards, you mix everything together with the rice and press firmly into a rectangular pan.  Let it sit for 15 minutes and then cut into small rectangular squares.

Lim and Thomas recommend wrapping them in parchment-lined aluminum foil, or Martha Wrap.  I settled for aluminum foil, which was rather difficult to unwrap with one hand while riding.  In the future, I may use snack-size Ziploc bags for ease of opening.

These fit nicely into the back pockets of jerseys, and are ready-to-eat.  For those inquiring about the food safety component, the authors write that the rice cakes are prepared normally at 7am, wrapped and left unrefrigerated in the van, and the cyclists eat them anywhere from 12pm-5pm without having food safety issues.  Also, you can store extras in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

These rice cakes were a nice change from the sugary gels and gummies, and my tastebuds and stomach were happy during my long bike ride.  I actually looked forward to eating “real food” to fuel my muscles while riding and did not have any G.I. issues.

As athletes, we are constantly bombarded with new diet trends, food products and supplements claiming to make us faster and stronger.  I admire Dr. Lim and Thomas’ utilization of real foods that can easily be purchased at a local store or on the road when traveling for a race.  Their goal in their own words- “is to optimize and thrive- to use real food as a real weapon.”  In my own words?  I would definitely want these two at my Feed Zone during a race and handing off rice cakes to me, so having this cookbook in my kitchen already makes me feel like a pro.

-Written by Julianne Kanzaki, MPH, RD