Vegetarianism and athletic performance

Dear friends,

as an active vegetarian who does sports, I've always been asking myself if vegetarianism would have had an impact on athletic performance. Therefore I decided to investigate the matter within my master's thesis titled "The Impact of Vegetarianism on Athletic Performance". 
This post is a brief summary of my findings.

The nutrients we  should plan to have enough in our diet or supplement are:

      Omega 3: found in canola oil, soya oil, micro algae
      Proteins: cheese, milk, beans, tofu, nuts, grains,..
      Vitamin B12: fortified foods such as soy milk, eggs and cheese
      Zinc: tofu, nuts, broccoli, grains, legumes..
      Iron: fortified grains, legumes, nuts, dried fruit,..
      Carnitine: supplementation
      Creatine: supplementation
      Carnosine: supplementation 

Don't be scared, those supplements are not on the doping list!
We all know that an appropriate training schedule, usually designed around the needs and qualities of the athlete and his discipline, finds a great correlation with the final performance. How about nutrition? 

What we widely agree on is the well-balanced diet that varies between the five most important food groups. We usually refer to it as the food pyramid. 

We also know that the diet of high performance athletes differs from the one of - allow me the term - normal people. This is usually due to eating according to their competitions or even training schedule. Our body needs the proper intake of nutrients in order to keep moisture to constant levels, engage a recovery process in an optimal way and keep daily performance at the highest degree. 
What we do not know is what happens when we ban one of the five food groups out of the diet.

With this said, let me give a summary of my findings.

Finding #1

Vegetarian athletes who take L-Carnitine as supplement will increase maximal aerobic power, and promote glycogen sparing in the course of prolonged exercise. Supplementation of L-Carnitine increases also the performance of sub maximal exercise and resistance to fatigue.

Finding #2

Higher levels of carnosine should enhance performance and help keeping the level of pH constant in muscles during exercise. It comes without saying that this might be an advantage for strength and endurance athletes.

Finding #3

CoQ10 is also said to boost energy and speed recovery from exercise.

Finding #4

Finally, creatine supplement has been found to have positive effects on vegetarian athletes. In fact, creatine acts as a performance enhancer offering athletes more power and strength for high intensity workouts. Depletion of creatine within the muscle can lead to reduced muscle power and build-up of lactic acid, resulting in rapid onset of fatigue. Oral creatine supplement not only increases the total creatine content of human skeletal muscle, but also seems to affect muscle hypertrophy (an increase in size of the tissue). Creatine is actually the only one of those four supplements with enough significant research and positive results. Other supplements were mainly tested in vitro, on animals or just with not enough research.

What exactly is Vegetarianism? There are five types of diets, defined as vegetarian. But with different levels of - let's say - strictness. They span from very strict to not that strict. 

Vegan: Vegans do not consume any animal product. Of course they do not consume red or white meat, fish nor fowl. They also do not consume eggs and dairy products. They do not use honey or beeswax, gelatine and any other animal product. They typically do not use animal products such as silk, leather and wool, either.

   

Lacto Vegetarian: 

Lacto-vegetarians do not eat red nor white meat, fish, fowl or eggs. However, lacto-vegetarians do consume dairy products such as cheese, milk and yogurt.

Ovo Vegetarian: Ovo-vegetarians do not eat red nor white meat, fish, fowl or dairy products.  However, they consume egg products.

Lacto-ovo-vegetarian consume dairy products and egg products. This is the most common type of vegetarian people.

Pescetarian: While technically not a type of vegetarian, these individuals do restrict their meat consumption barely to fish and seafood. Pescetarians do not consume red meat, white meat or fowl. This is considered a “semi-vegetarian” or “flexitarian” diet.

Pollotarian: Much like the pescatarian, this “semi-vegetarian” diet restricts meat consumption to poultry and fowl only. Pollotarians do not consume red meat or fish and seafood

Flexitarian: Theirs is a plant-based diet with occasional meat on the menu. These folks do their best to limit meat intake as much as possible and they have an almost entirely plant-based diet. This is not technically considered a “vegetarian” diet, but we commend the effort!

In my research I included only athletes within the category of lacto-ovo-vegetarian. I tried to find the impact of that particular diet on their athletic performance.

I started by looking at the nutrients that are present in meat, fish and poultry. Therefore, I tried to figure out wether those nutrients are really essential for the human body or not. If so, my question was “where can we find them and can we consider them enough for  an athlete to perform at his/her fullest?” 

What I can confirm is that the lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet has fewer chances of nutritional deficiencies due to the integration of a variety of plant foods, eggs and dairy products.

As a conclusion, with a well-balanced and varied diet, which should definitely be correctly planned, the lacto-ovo-vegetarian will have no negative but neither significant positive influence on his athletic performance.

No evidence from the performance perspective does not mean that being vegetarian is pointless. Positive findings have been related to overall health of the individual under study. 

Epidemiological studies in the US, UK and Germany found that embracing a vegetarian diet has the tendency to lower the risks of heart and vascular disease, diabetes mellitus type 2, some types of cancer (such as colon, stomach, mouth, oesophagus, lung,…), high blood pressure, obesity and some other chronic diseases. 

It is possible to be vegetarian and elite athletes at the same time. Think about swimmer Murray Rose, tennis player Billie Jean King, six-times-winner of Ironman competition Dave Scott and many many more.

Love,

Caroline