by Dr Michael Greger
Is plant-based best for sporting endurance?
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In spite of the well-documented health benefits of more plant-based diets, less is known regarding the effects of these diets on athletic performance.
ecently, the remains of dozens of Roman gladiators were discovered in a mass grave. The clue to their identities were the rather distinct types of mortal injuries they found, like being speared in the head with a trident. Using just their skeletons, they were able to reconstruct the death blows, show just how buff they really were, and even try to reconstruct their “diet of barley and beans.” You can look at carbon isotopes and see what kinds of plants they ate; nitrogen isotopes…reflect [any] intake of animal protein. You can also look at the sulphur in their bones and the amount of strontium, leading commentators to submit that the best athletes in ancient Rome ate largely plant-based diets. Then there were the legionnaires, the Roman army troopers, famed for their abilities, also eating a similar kind of diet, suggesting the best fighters in the ancient world were essentially vegetarian. So, if the so-called perfect fighting machines, the great sports heroes of the day, were eating mostly grains and beans, should that tell us anything about sports nutrition and the preferred diets of elite athletes?
Plato pushed plants
Well, most of the Greeks and Romans were basically vegetarian and centering their diets around grains, fruit, vegetables and beans, so maybe the gladiators’ diets weren’t that remarkable. Plato, for example, pushed plants, preferring plant foods for their health and efficiency. So yes, the Roman gladiators were known as ‘barley men’. But is that because barley gives you strength and stamina? Or was that just the basic food that people ate at the time, not necessarily for performance, but because it was just so cheap? Well, if you look at “the modern Spartans,” the Tarahumara Indians, the ones that run races where they kick a ball for oh, 75 miles just for the fun of it, running all day, all night, and all day, maybe 150 miles if they’re feeling in the mood. What do you get if you win? Actually, special popularity with the ladies, although how much of a reward that would prove to be for a man who had been running for two days straight is questionable, though maybe their endurance extends to other dimensions. Probably, not since the days of the ancient Spartans have a people achieved such a high state of extreme physical
44 wholefoodliving.life | Autumn 2023
Dr Michael Greger is well known (and respected) for his pithy observations on the science of plant-based eating. In his following piece (republished under Creative Commons license) he examines several studies and warns of the importance in adhearing to proper scientific principles when considering the evidence. For more, don't hesitate to check out his very informative web site.
www.nutritionfacts.org conditioning. And what did they eat? The same kind of 75 to 80 per cent starch diet is based on beans, corn, and squash. And, they had the cholesterol levels to prove it, total cholesterol levels down at an essentially heart attack-proof 136. And it’s not some special genetics they have - feed them enough egg yolks, and their cholesterol creeps right up. Modern-day Olympian runners eat the same stuff. What are they eating over there in Kenya? A 99 per cent vegetarian diet centred mostly around various starches. But as in all these cases, is their remarkable physical prowess because of their diets or in spite of their diets? Or have nothing to do with their diets? You don’t know, until you put it to the test. In spite of the well-documented health benefits of more plantbased diets, less is known regarding the effects of these diets on athletic performance. So, they compared elite vegetarian and omnivore endurance athletes for aerobic fitness and strength. So, comparing oxygen utilization on the treadmill and quad strength with leg extensions. The vegetarians beat out their omnivore counterparts for cardiorespiratory fitness, but their strength didn’t differ. Suggesting, in the very least, that vegetarian diets do not compromise athletic performance.
National Runners' Health Study
But this was a cross-sectional study. Maybe the veg athletes were just fitter because they trained harder? In the National Runners’ Health Study looking at thousands of runners: vegetarian runners were recorded running significantly more on a weekly basis, so, maybe that explains their superior fitness. Though, maybe their superior fitness explains their greater distances. Other cross-sectional studies have found no differences in
