Yahoo Sports Raw Heart, Raw Milk & Homemade Snickers Bars: How Capitals' Jakob Chychrun's Ancestral Diet Came To Be & How It Keeps Him Going
ARLINGTON, V.A. — Washington Capitals defenseman Jakob Chychrun can't pinpoint the last time he picked up food from the supermarket.
But for the 26-year-old, that's his normal.
Over the last two years, his ancestral diet, which promotes foods that our direct ancestors ate before the industrialization of the modern food chain, has taken on a new form, and the big-chain grocery stores don't have what he needs to keep his lifestyle going.
"It's trying to eat seasonally and trying to eat the highest quality stuff you can find and knowing where your food's coming from," Chychrun told The Hockey News. "I think it's important having farmers and trying to avoid the grocery stories. You just aren't sure where all that produce has been made and if it's in a lab or being sprayed with a bunch of stuff. Just trying to be as local as you can."
Brandon Duhaime, Chychrun's lifelong friend, has been along for the ride when it comes to Chychrun's eating habits, and while he's used to the unorthodox style, he admits it's still different than anything he's ever seen.
"He's dialled in for sure," Duhaime said with a smile. "I try to keep my nutrition tight, but I don't know if it's comparable to that. I'll try to implement a few things and see how it goes."
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Chychrun's diet has been years in the making. He started to get more into nutrition and health and wellness when he was age 12, and he likes to stay on top of the news and latest research. That said, his regimen has changed a lot as new studies have come out over time.
"You always have to make adjustments. I try to keep my parents, my family in the loop and try to keep them as healthy as can be. I try to help them out, and my mom always gives us a hard time because one day we tell her something's good and then the next day, we tell her something else is better and she gets frustrated with us because it's always changing," Chychrun said. "It's just adapting and learning and always trying to keep up with the new science and what's best for you and experimenting and finding what works.
"It's kind of a never-ending moving target that I'm just trying to hit and feel and find out what I feel best with."
Chychrun's diet is all organic, from the produce to the protein to the dairy. He and his wife will try to check out local farmer's markets — they just recently visited their first one in the District — and order from Amish farms.
"We try to get all of our (food) from the highest quality sources we can find, and that's really the most important," Chychrun said.
The Amish play a big role in forming Chychrun's habits.
"If you look at the Amish, they eat seasonally. Whatever they can grow in the summer, they eat. Obviously, you can't grow the same things in the winter, so you adapt and you eat different foods," he pointed out. "It's probably more of a higher-fat diet in the winter and probably a more high-carb diet in the summer with more fruits and veggies. It's trying to eat seasonally and trying to eat the highest quality stuff you can find."
A lot of Chychrun's meals will have raw and organic beginnings. Their house is always stocked with fresh protein, along with fresh fruit and other key ingredients like raw milk, raw honey and dates, which are a fundamental part of several of his snacks.
"We do a great job of having the variety of proteins with lamb, beef, chicken, wild-caught fish, oysters, crustaceans, we eat everything," Chychrun said. "We try to really mix it up and get that nice variety of different proteins. I'm really into lamb right now, I love lamb chops, a nice lollipop lamb chop and the grill is kind of my favorite thing in the whole world right now."
Then, there are the organs. Chychrun will eat raw hearts and livers, which are filled with nutrients.
"The heart actually surprisingly tastes pretty good, just tastes like meat, just a raw muscle meat, like a tartar," Chychrun said, then laughed, "The liver is terrible."
Another surprising staple of his diet: ice cream, which he said can "literally be a superfood" and a healthy snack the way he makes it from scratch.
"I make ice cream all the time... I do raw deary, raw cream, raw milk, I put in six egg yolks, I put in dates, I'll put in whatever flavor I want to do, lemon olive oil, honey flavor. You can do all these different flavors of ice creams that are super healthy, very nutrient-dense, no sugar at all other than the dates and maybe a little bit of maple syrup or raw honey," Chychrun said. "It's so nutrient-dense and you can eat it pretty much every night if you want. I think it's a very healthy alternative to Ben and Jerry's, which just has a million ingredients and carcinogens and loads of white table sugars."
For Chychrun, his diet is about promoting nutrition and wellness, but also feeling good. He'll notice that he will start to grow sluggish if his eating habits change, and since he's embraced his new eating habits, he's felt better than he has before.
"I think the cleaner you eat, as soon as you start to if you ever go back to the processed foods that are kind of a staple in everyone's diet, they just don't taste the same anymore and you don't feel the same," Chychrun pointed out. "I think your gut, you notice a lot of issues with your gut and just feel inflamed, feel tired... I'm definitely at the point now where I notice the difference. If you eat those foods for a week you may not notice it, but I've been doing it for a long enough time now. I definitely notice if I'm not eating too clean, it definitely affects me and I don't feel as good."
While it can be difficult to say goodbye to certain foods and guilty pleasures of the past, Chychrun doesn't really miss certain foods from his past, because he can just re-create them the best that he can with organic ingredients.
For instance, his go-to snack on the golf course was a classic Snickers bar. Their artificial ingredients, however, make them a no-go now, so his wife makes Chychrun his own organic "Snickers" to bring on the green.
"My wife makes these dates, you take the pit out of a date, you cut it open, you put a little bit of high-quality nut butter in the middle, close it up, you melt like a really high-quality dark chocolate unsweetened, and then you roll it in that and then sprinkle a little sea salt and put it in the freezer," Chychrun said. "That is, like, so much better than a Snickers bar. It's insane. I really don't even miss anything, because we just come up with ways to make your favorite things."
Chychrun's diet has become a bit of a talking point in the locker room since he was acquired, but for his teammates, it gives them a different perspective on life.
"I'm feeling like I'm learning more and more every day," Pierre-Luc Dubois said. "Every day I learn something new about it. So add him to the list of things that are interesting."
It's all worked out for Chychrun, though; his strength and stamina help him log heavy minutes on the ice and keep him in shape. And most importantly, it just helps him feel refreshed.
"I've always been into nutrition and wellness and training... it's been changing quite a bit for me, so I just try to adapt," Chychrun said.
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