Posted on 06/21/2012 7:44:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway
With the publication this month of "Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness," by the vegan distance runner Scott Jurek, vegan diets have become a wildly popular topic on running-related Web sites. But is going totally meatless and, as in Mr. Jurek's case, dairy-free advisable for other serious athletes, or for the rest of us who just want to be healthy and fit?
To find out, I talked with three experts about why, and whether, those of us who are active should consider giving up meat or more. None of the experts are themselves vegan, though two are vegetarian: David C. Nieman, a professor of health and exercise science at Appalachian State University, who's run 58 marathons or ultramarathons and has studied runners at extreme events; and D. Enette Larson-Meyer, an associate professor of human nutrition at the University of Wyoming, as well as a longtime competitive athlete and author of "Vegetarian Sports Nutrition." A third expert, Nancy Clark, who describes herself as "two-thirds vegetarian" -- she doesn't have meat at breakfast or lunch, but does at dinner -- is a sports nutrition expert in Massachusetts and the author of "Nancy Clark's Food Guide for Marathoners."
Q.
Will a vegan diet make someone a better athlete?
A.
Nancy Clark: I was just at the American College of Sports Medicine Annual meeting in San Francisco, and there was a presentation about vegetarian athletes that basically concluded that there's not enough research to know how vegetarian -- let alone vegan -- diets affect athletes. But anecdotally, people do fine. It's possible that some vegan athletes are low on creatine, a nutrient that you get only from meat and that can help during short bouts of intense exercise, like sprinting, though supplementation isn't necessary.
(Excerpt) Read more at well.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Prince Fielder is a vegan.
I was a lacto-ovo-vegetarian until the 90’s. I did resistance lifting, swimming and running 20 miles per week. I worked full time and went to school full time until 1985. My labs and vitals were just fine. As long as you calculate your MDR of protein (grams per Kg), you’ll do ok unless there are confounding variables in the mix.
works better with steroid shots, I’d think.
Many bodybuilders are vegetarians.
There’s a lot of protein in plant material. A person won’t be lacking for protein.
100% committed vegan , unless you count the side of beef he eats every day.
FWIW, when the Sikhs gave up on pacifism and decided to fight back against Islamic agression, their leaders instructed them to eat meat so they would grow strong. Important in an era when combat was hand to hand.
Humans are designed to eat meat.
Gimme sum meat!!!
My food is vegan, not me.
... the more he does that, the tireder he's gonna get...
(Pardon my ignorance, but who is that?)
No. Male athletes need meat. After lifting and practice, we would eat and drink like Vikings. On Saturdays, we did battle. What happened to America?
Coming out of a downtown cafe this evening a few minutes after 6, I passed a man holding a mobile phone and asking someone on the other end: “Do you have on your menu a macaroni and cheese dish?
My friend that was approaching appearing anorexic got some help and decided she could “handle’ being a vegan, not against eating meat, just in her state of not thinking clearly she equated vegan with still not really eating. Later she wanted to start running again and I suggested maybe a little lean meat would help with endurance, muscle, etc. So now she eats turkey, chicken, fish. But has changed her obsession from food to running.
I just think everything in moderation is best. And sometimes more then moderation is good!
The vegan diet is extremely dangerous and can lead to a sickly shortened life.
“There’s a lot of protein in plant material. A person won’t be lacking for protein.”
Sure, but you have to consume a lot of plants, and the proper variety, to get enough protein. By contrast, just a bit of meat a day will fulfill most of your needs.
There’s a reason that herbivores spends all day eating and predators can just do what they need to in order to score a meal, then laze around in the sun the rest of the day.
I’ve never heard of a vegitarian body builder. Lots of them I knew did eat only fish and birds though.
Dave Draper I believe.
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