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:
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
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?
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
