What's on Patchan's menu?
Matt Patchan tries to adhere to the principles of a kosher diet for health reasons.
Doug Finger/Staff photographerPublished: Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 11:51 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 11:51 a.m.
Sitting inside Peach Valley Cafe just off 34th St. and Archer Rd. one morning over the summer, Matt Patchan felt at home with a fluffy, sweet breakfast treat staring him in the face.
After searching for a place that wouldn’t decimate his scrupulous diet, Peach Valley did the trick.
“That place has the best pancakes in Gainesville,” said Florida’s sophomore offensive tackle.
Ironically, it’s hard for the big lineman to be happy with food. Patchan simply turns his nose up and stomach away from the everyday enjoyment of a McDonald’s Big Mac or a Wendy’s Frosty.
Linemen often seem like trash compactors with their eating habits, but not Patchan. His highly nutritious kosher diet prevents him from dining on some of the most common meals.
"I don't eat any pork because if it's a four-legged animal it has to have split hooves and chew the cud," Patchan said. "If you have split hooves and chew the cud the animal has a four-chamber stomach, like cows and goats, and it takes a longer time for the food they eat to digest, to become acclimated to their system and become part of their meat.
"Pigs … if they eat something, which usually they'll eat feces, its own young, rotting trash and things like that ... they'll eat whatever, and within four hours it's part of their meat and so you're eating whatever it eats."
No seared honey-glazed pork chops for Patchan.
Milk? Only if it isn't pasteurized or homogenized. He swears the organic milk his dad gets him sounds gross, but is “really, really good.”
A fancy lobster or crab dinner? Patchan will pass. He’s ditching shellfish and any other aquatic creature that doesn’t have scales and fins.
Patchan, who is blood type O, says he won’t eat farm-raised meat because of the hormones injected into the animals. With his blood type he’s got to get his red meat in, but the only way is to have it special ordered by his father.
But Patchan ran into a bit of a problem after his first year. He played at as low as 240 pounds at times as a defensive tackle, but moving back to his more natural position at offensive tackle, Patchan had to bulk up.
Enter redshirt junior offensive lineman Carl Johnson.
Johnson put himself in charge of altering Patchan’s diet to get him as close to 300 pounds as possible.
“I told him for us to win, we’ve got to have five very good linemen, so I told him to eat with somebody who knows how to eat,” Johnson said.
Johnson laughed when Patchan told him his diet. He scoffed at Patchan thinking he could gain close to 60 pounds on what coach Urban Meyer calls a “nut-and-berry” diet.
Taking Patchan to on-campus restaurants was a no-go. Ordering pizza was out of the question. A bag of chips, French fries and even a Little Debbie snack cake wasn’t happening.
Johnson said he resorted to having to “cram (food) down (Patchan’s) throat.”
“He eats healthy and when I say healthy, I mean like Neanderthal healthy,” Johnson said.
Then Johnson introduced his teammate to Peach Valley and things changed.
Patchan, who likes his hot cakes minus the syrup, said he’s enjoyed his new eating hole so much that strength and conditioning coordinator Mickey Marotti and offensive coordinator Steve Addazio usually join with the occasional challenge.
“(Addazio) talks so much (stuff) about how his daughter can eat more pancakes than me so I try to prove him wrong every morning when I eat breakfast," he said.
Besides the Peach Valley fix, Johnson said Patchan has loosened his grip on his diet in order to gain the proper weight.
It’s certainly worked out so far. Patchan said he’s stuffing in six meals a day and has increased his bench press max to 375 pounds.
Coach Urban Meyer said Patchan is near 300 pounds, is a “legit” 4.7 guy in the 40 and is in the thick of the battle for left tackle.
Meyer didn’t get Patchan’s diet at first, but after few adjustments, he’s satisfied.
“I thought it was bizarre and he’s changed a little bit and I think that’s helped him gain the weight he’s needed to gain.”
Patchan understands the perplexed reactions he gets concerning his diet, but he says it’s as original as it gets.
"People look at it like, 'He's a weirdo,' " he said. "No, that's how god intended it to be and that's how nature is."
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