2 Thin Chefs

Sunday, Jun. 11, 2006 By JOHN CLOUD
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De Laurentiis does eat her own food when she's taping her show; she doesn't spit it out after a take or force herself to vomit, as several fans have asked. But she's not often having stuffed shells and mopped-up sauce. The day we spent together, De Laurentiis had a little bit of oatmeal with maple syrup for breakfast and a Caesar salad with chicken for lunch, followed by several small sweets from a cake shop. At dinner, she ordered three more salads--although, to be fair, one was served with a tuna fillet and another was shared with the table. And she did scoop up every bite of her dessert, an espresso granita with whipped cream. Still, De Laurentiis turned down nearly all the many alimentary offerings routinely presented to famous chefs by fans and job seekers. Except for two bites of chocolate someone made for her, De Laurentiis ate nothing from the many gift platters. In Mischel's terms, she has acquired "self-regulatory competence": she can cool the gluttonous impulses activated in our lizard brains when we see food.

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Goin can do it too. When we had dinner, she ate from the seven-course menu enthusiastically. But it was her first and only meal of the day. During a 5 1/2-hr. plane ride that day, she had consumed only nuts.

Paradoxically, De Laurentiis and Goin learned self-regulatory competence by exposing themselves to food all the time. If they were Mischel's kids, they would be sitting with the cookie in the room every day--and not just any cookie but one rich in fat and professionally baked to perfection. Actually, both chefs were once just like Mischel's weak-willed subjects. In Goin's first restaurant job, she would stand in the walk-in and eat so much ice cream with strawberries that she couldn't touch dinner. De Laurentiis was even worse. As a student at Le Cordon Bleu Paris, she often ate only what she cooked. "Some days were just pastry days," she says. "So Giada made about 50 croissants. Well, Giada ate 50 croissants." Eventually she gained 15 lbs. "It's taken me some time to learn to control myself," she says. But she did learn; her weight has been stable, at 117 lbs., for several years. (Goin thinks she weighs 135 but says she doesn't regularly weigh herself.)

In some of his experiments, Mischel suggested to kids that they pretend the cookie is just a picture of a cookie, not the real thing. Those kids were able to wait longer than the kids in control groups. (As one child said, "You can't eat a picture.") But De Laurentiis' and Goin's experiences suggest that we might try another strategy, one whose short-term risks may impart a long-term lesson: let your lizard brain eat all the cookies you want until you realize how awful you feel. De Laurentiis says she was "constantly sick" in Paris. Goin, who is often recognized by fellow chefs at top restaurants and then bombarded with extra food, describes the experience of gorging herself at some of those restaurants as "the worst feeling in the world ... If you go to the French Laundry"--the Napa Valley restaurant considered by some to be America's best--"it's like you want to stop a third of the way through because it's so amazing ... By the end, you're like, 'Uncle. Stop.'" Not surprisingly, both De Laurentiis' and Goin's portions are somewhat smaller than what most chefs serve. Their books offer chicken recipes that specify tiny 3-oz. (De Laurentiis) and 5-oz. (Goin) morsels of fowl per guest.