Healthy athletes go veggie!
I recently came across this article discussing the myths and realities of whether athletes need meat to perform at their best. The answer? No!
Vegetarian diets, when properly planned, provide all the nutrients you need, and help prevent and treat disease. Vegetarian diets offer a number of nutritional benefits, including lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol and animal protein as well as higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate and antioxidants such as vitamins C and E. Vegetarians tend to be leaner than nonvegetarians, have lower blood cholesterol and blood pressure levels, and suffer less from heart disease, type 2 diabetes and prostate and colon cancer.
There are so many health reasons for making the switch to a vegetarian diet, whether you’re an Olympic athlete or a couch potato. So what are you waiting for?
Related Stories
POSTED IN: Becoming Vegetarian
5 opinions for Healthy athletes go veggie!
Fran
Dec 30, 2006 at 8:15 pm
I definitely agree with what that article says about the importance of carbohydrates to muscles–that’s been my experience. The more carbohydrates I eat, the more energy I and my muscles seem to have, and the more my muscles seem to grow too. Protein makes me feel sluggish, and I mean even high-protein vegan foods don’t agree with me too much.
But some information that came out recently disputes this part of the article: “Ancient Greek and Roman athletes and warriors emphasized a diet based on meat to gain the competitive edge….Roman gladiators believed that meat made them better warriors.”
From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/02/wglad02.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/02/ixworld.html
“Roman gladiators were overweight vegetarians who lived on barley and beans, according to a scientific study of the largest gladiator graveyard discovered.
Karl Grossschmidt, a forensic anthropologist at Vienna University, used chemical testing on the bones to reveal that gladiators stuck to a diet of barley and beans to bulk out….
‘They got enough of this food every day to make them very fat and strong,’ he said.
He concluded that they devised the diet primarily to protect themselves from slashing wounds and damage to nerves and blood vessels, with the layer of fat supplementing their scant armour.”
–Whenever people discuss bone and teeth testing from the past (and it’s more often anti-veg people), they make my bones and teeth ache, as there is so much room for error, not just observer-bias errors, but technical errors too related to decay and fossilization processes themselves, which probably aren’t fully understood because those processes normally aren’t observed in real time in general and haven’t been with specific remains; I think that many factors could affect the testing results, could skew them one way or another. Anti-vegetarian people often use that testing’s results to make dogmatic statements about the diets of ancient humans and hominids, which they love to claim were meat-laden. Yet it seems to me that the more even that testing’s been done lately, the more people usually find plants were more important in ancient diets.
I don’t believe ancient realities can probably be known with high accuracy, so people should de-emphasize using from-the-past arguments. I think focusing on the now is best, on diet and humans now; we ain’t fossilized bones. Anecdotally, after 14 years of eating near-vegan, my husband Steve can bench press more than ever; his strength has increased with time. He never used to be able to easily lift his body weight, yet he does this regularly now–from the garage rafters. He thinks he’s a vegetarian Rocky Balboa or something :oD.
Fran
Dec 30, 2006 at 8:17 pm
Ooops–that was supposed to be a big-toothed grin smiley at the end. Let me try again! :D.
Jul
Dec 30, 2006 at 10:02 pm
Go Steve the near-vegan! I just hope he hasn’t had all that freaky-looking plastic surgery that Rocky has had (they’ve been promoting the new movie a lot over here, and I jump back in fear every time I see Sylvester Stallone’s mangled face). Wish I could get my husband to bench-press something…
Fran
Dec 30, 2006 at 10:36 pm
lol Omigod–noooo. Steve’s had no surgery. While I’m not crazy about the violence, I do like the Rocky movies as stories, but I think it’s past time for Stallone to retire at doing them! When Steve heard about the new movie, he laughed. Typical Hollywood, the male actors can act like they’re in their twenties till they’re in their sixties, but the female actors are supposed to retire to a life of knitting by the time they hit forty.
I didn’t know Stallone had surgery. He isn’t the only male actor to do so; I think plenty do. And maybe that shows male actors can’t get away with aging anymore. It’s about time already that the sexist inequity gets evened-out.
At the same time, I wish people would keep their real parts unless changing them’s absolutely necessary for medical reasons. Real parts mean a real world, fake parts mean a fake world, at least to me.
Anyway, happy veggie eating!
Fran
Jul
Dec 30, 2006 at 11:06 pm
Glad to hear Steve’s all natural. :)
I think I’ve become hyper-sensitive to plastic-surgery-face since living in Zurich. There are so many women here who have faces that appear completely artificial, and it looks awful. I’m sure they’d be much better off aging gracefully and naturally, at least for my taste. Stallone is one of the first men I’ve noticed who has that same fake look. A move towards sexual equality, perhaps, but I agree it’s not necessarily in the right direction…
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: