Food Guru is Galloping Across the Continent With a New Message
Generations of people all over the world have cooked, eyes glued to the TV, watching Graham Kerr spin all over a studio kitchen making a mess and peeling off one-liners like so much onion skin. From his days as the Galloping Gourmet to PBS’ The Gathering Place, his present day television incarnation, Kerr has remained a mainstay of the celebrity cooking world - long before the arrival of television channels dedicated to cooking, he was inviting the masses into his zany kitchen.
He’s a changed man
While he’s gregarious and engaging as ever, it’s no secret that Kerr is not the same person he was during his ‘Galloping’ days. His very public battle with alcohol and his penchant for cooking shockingly decadent foods is now so far in the past it’s nearly folklore. What remains is a man with a strong dedication to his wife and family, to his faith, and to helping people make healthy choices that affect not only themselves, but the world around them.
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The TV image is gone. He’s now an experienced man on a mission to tell communities across North America about something he and wife Treena – who was nominated for two Emmy awards for producing The Galloping Gourmet and is now a published poet – have dubbed “outdulgence.”
Though the tour began this fall, the Kerrs – who are in their 70s – have been practicing the outdulgence philosophy since 1980. As they describe it, outdulgence makes a measurable link between healthy lifestyle changes and our ability to impact the world around us.
“Self matters,” says Graham, “but is that where it ends? If you make a change that positively impacts your health, you are likely saving time and money. If you can somehow quantify those few cents and minutes of lifestyle change, you can then use those resources to contribute to the world. Ask ‘what breaks my heart looking around at the world…then look on that bruised world and try to make it right from your own perspective.’”
Curbing the sweet tooth to help the world
As an example, Kerr points to a common addiction: cookies. He says the average person consumes 30,000 calories of cookies per year, which translates into eleven pounds of body-fat tissue. But most people think that they couldn’t possibly be included in that group.
“The human being, when asked what he ate in a day, almost universally under reports by 50-percent,” says the chef.
To curb his own sweet tooth, he began to eat frozen grapes which are very sweet from natural sugars. “They are a frozen sorbet in their original package. They taste delicious, are always present and are good for you.” He calculates a savings of $262 per annum for an average household. Following the outdulgence philosophy, that money (and the time savings that go with it) can then be used for anything from a neighborhood project to sponsoring an orphaned child in Africa.
Kerr was inducted into the American Culinary Hall of Fame in 1999, and has a list a mile long of distinguished affiliations, published works and awards. At the height of his career, he would command an astronomical $10,000 per day consulting fee to, in his words, “help corporations make their products more addictive.” While the companies never actually used the dreaded “A” word, they did hire Kerr find out how to make people want to eat more of their products, more often. “Which is really the definition of addictive, isn’t it?” he happily points out.
Antitode to perpetual food intake
The outdulgence philosophy, designed to be an antidote to a culture of perpetual food intake, is at the opposite end of the consumption spectrum from those early days. The website to support the tour – www.outdulgence.com – even carries the slogan “converting habits that harm into resources that heal.” The Kerrs are hoping that people with success stories of any degree will write about them on the website’s blog section as a testimony to others.
In some centres, very different segments of the community – churches, hospitals (even American hospitals that compete for business) and universities – are banding together to host the Kerrs and their message about outdulgence. Graham says the couple has been trying to pull together those in the hospitality field with nutrition based professionals and the psychology departments of local colleges and universities. The topic of food needs this holistic, multitiered approach, he believes. “There are deep psychological, spiritual battles that are taking place within people.”
For those curious about what the traveling celebrity couple will be riding in as they traverse North America over the next four years, Graham says “the rig” had to meet some upfront criteria. “The Lord told us it must be safe, must be comfortable enough to live in for four years of travel across Canada and the United States and it must not cause us to stumble.” They settled on a used 38-foot, 2001 Discovery by Fleetwood. To underscore their desire to remain humble in their mission, they even had all of the gold fixtures replaced by some with a brushed nickel finish.
Kicking it off
“The Kerrs had their entire Mount Vernon, Washington church lay their hands on the RV – by polishing with clothes – praying for a successful journey for the couple. The sojourning couple say they, in turn, will dutifully pray for the church back home everytime they polish the vehicle . . . somewhere in North America.”
Graham Kerr is an internationally known culinary and television personality, award-winning author, and master of metaphorical speaking. His focus is on serving people who want to make healthy, creative, lifestyle changes and believes that the only lasting changes are the ones that we enjoy. His life goal is “to help to convert habits that harm into resources that heal.”
