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 ...
Here’s a list of many athletes. Many prominent bodybuilders are in the list.
It’s not Bill Pear, it’s Bill Pearl, just for clarification. :)
Here’s a list of many athletes. Many prominent bodybuilders are in the list.
It’s not Bill Pear, it’s Bill Pearl, just for clarification. :)
It depends on what you’re eating, just like anything.
Nuts, for example, are full of energy. You can easily get a full days worth of calories from two lunch baggies full of nuts.
Of course, you need more than nuts to subsist, but I’m only making the point that a vegetarian diet does not mean that it will lack useful calories.
I’m not a vegetarian, for the record, but I am aware that you can get a healthy diet as one if you’re willing to educate yourself.
“Many bodybuilders are vegetarians.”
Do you have a link to support this claim?
My impression by reading Bodybuilding.com and learning about what serious bodybuilders eat I really can’t find any vegetarians.
My impression is that only about one percent of bodybuilders who compete are vegetarians.
Plant material has “protein” but beans and legumes do not have the same quality as fish, eggs, chicken or beef.
Anyone interested in improving their health should seriously question the merits of eliminating meat, fish and eggs from their diet.
Challenging full body exercise and limiting food portion size for meals will improve your health if that is your desire.
Don’t go with weird diets.
See Body for Life by Bill Phillips. http://bodyforlife.com/success-stories/#pg-1
He argues that before you go on someone’s diet plan you should get a current photo of the author and see if you want to look like that.
I just provided a list of prominent athletes who are vegetarian and there are many more who aren’t on the list. Just because the numbers may not be large, though they are probably more than most people would suspect, doesn’t mean it can’t be done by most people.
It comes down to personal choice.
If a person makes dietary changes, they should become educated about their choice to ensure it’s a good and viable one.
I agree with you.
I’d go further and say that it should be done under the guidance of a dietician. Don’t make changes on your own.
“Dave Draper I believe.”
No, you are thinking of Bill Perl who was a lacto vegetarian.
If you eat eggs, whey protein and milk and take supplements like zink then you might be able to build a body. But, it would be much more difficult to do that with veganism I think.
http://www.davedraper.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/PmWiki/Vegetarianism
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/babyboom81.htm
OK, thanks for the link.
I did searches on all of the body builders listed. 8 are Lacto ovo vegetarian and 6 are vegans.
Eating eggs and whey protein powder should be enough to build muscle, but I really don’t understand how the vegans can do it.
Perhaps different body types are suited to veganism?
Bill Pear — Lacto ovo vegetarian
Roy Hilligenn — Lacto ovo vegetarian
Tiffany Croker — Lacto ovo vegetarian
Andreas Cahling — Lacto ovo vegetarian
Albert Beckles — Lacto ovo vegetarian
Roy Hilligenn — Lacto ovo vegetarian
Tiffany Croker — Lacto ovo vegetarian
Luiz Freitas — Lacto ovo vegetarian
Ed Bauer — Vegan
Aura Andrew — Vegan
Joel Kirkilis — Vegan
Patrick Reiners — Vegan
Robbie Hazeley — Vegan
Torre Washington — Vegan
There are 20 amino acids that we need, of which we are incapable of creating 9 of them.
histidine
isoleucine
leucine
lysine
methionine
phenylalanine
threonine
tryptophan
valine
In addition, children need arginine.
As long as we get these nine in adequate amounts, our body is capable of breaking them down and reforming them to meet its needs. There are amino acids in almost all foods, including many fruits, not that I’m advocating a fruitarian diet. :)
When you consume meat, the body breaks it down to amino acids and reforms them into the particular combination it needs. If your source of amino acids is from plant material, it does the same thing.
It depends on how well educated a person is willing to become and the time they are willing to spend on their diet. Probably the main disadvatage a well-founded vegetarian diet is the time it takes to prepare meals. But the main advantage is that you can save a fair bit of cash.
Some dieticians have told me that if you have O blood, you should incorporate some animal protein for optimal health, even if it’s only eggs.
Not entirely. We can’t it raw, that is aside from steak tartar from time to time but over all the meat we humans eat has to be cooked. Cooking brings out certain enzymes raw meat doesn’t. We don’t have a digestion system to process raw meat. We also don’t have the kind of teeth for meat eating that meat eating predators have.
Not to mention that carnivors have short digestive tracts, whereas human digestive tracts are fairly long.
Our ancestors thousands of generations ago did just fine eating meat. We’re all around today because they fought their way to the top of the food chain.
Vegan is an old Indian word that means “bad hunter”.
I think that certain forms of malnutrition (e.g., those caused by eating bizarre fad diets such as vegan) take years to really become symptomatic. I’ve seen little evidence that people are able to stick with a vegetarian or vegan diet for more than a few years.
Vegetarians always appear to me to have a rather pallid, unhealthy look.
No personal experience in deadly combat, but from what I’ve read adrenalin and other hormonal responses to the greatest stress anyone can be under are largely responsible for the exhaustion factor. I’m not sure the specific variety of combat makes a great deal of difference.
To attempt to salvage my original point. I suspect combat with edged weapons is more dependent on sheer physical strength than modern combat, for which stamina is more important.
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