Posts by :
Vegetarian Athletes: The Ultramarathon Runner
June 8th, 2010From espn.com
Ultramarathon running is already tough enough. A typical race can cover 100 miles or more, often in scorching heat, blistering cold or at dizzying elevation. As one of the leading ultramarathon runners in the world, Scott Jurek has had to deal with all of those challenges and more, vaulting scorpions in the desert, even meeting an occasional bear on the trails.
Scott Jurek is proof that athletic endurance doesn’t have to be compromised by a vegan diet. But Jurek adds another degree of difficulty to the mix. As a strict vegan, he goes through his grueling training regimen on a diet consisting of fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts. This seems completely impossible when you consider Jurek’s typical calorie intake during peak training periods: 6,000 to 8,000 calories a day. Despite all that calorie loading, he packs just 165 pounds on his super lean, 6-foot-2 frame.
“For breakfast it’s a dense, caloric smoothie,” Jurek explained. “Then you’ve got lots of fruits and almonds. People assume it’s all carbs. But there’s also fat — avocados, rich monosaturated fats, almonds, olive oil.”
He’s just getting warmed up.
“For protein you’ve got beans, lentils, combining whole grains. Tofu and tempeh. Then for carbs: whole grains, breads, cereals, fruits and veggies, whole foods, unprocessed foods. There’s three main meals, then lots of smaller snack foods and mini-meals throughout the day.”
Jurek’s background didn’t seem to portend a vegan diet years later. Born and raised in Minnesota, Jurek lived on meat and potatoes, regularly going out for hunting and fishing expeditions. After competing at Nordic skiing in his younger days, he ran his first ultramarathon in 1994.
“I had my doubts, sure,” Jurek recalled. “Am I going to be strong enough, have enough protein? There were all those common disclaimers, how it would affect my performance. When I went on to win the race, I realized it was all just this mental barrier. After performing well on [the vegan diet], I never really doubted it afterwards.”
Neither did Jurek’s rivals. Not after he went on one of the most dominant runs in the history of his sport, including seven straight Western States victories. Instead, he often gets feedback from other distance runners, with everyone from beginners to high-level competitors telling Jurek that he inspires them to train harder and to seek out alternative diets.
Still, Jurek says he never tries to impose his personal choices on anyone else. Nor does he see his vegan eating as a way to enhance performance. Like Danzig, Jurek says his diet does help him indirectly, in that it helps him recover from the pounding that his sport dishes out. A lot of people excel at ultramarathon running while living on unhealthy diets, he says.
“But where are they going to be in 20 years?” Jurek asked. “For me, it’s about optimizing health. It’s about lifestyle and longevity. Then you think about what vegetarian diets can do for the mass population, in terms of lower consumption of resources. When you look at the numbers, it’s pretty staggering.”
Traveling around the world, while competing everywhere from Death Valley to Greece, Jurek has learned how to maintain his vegan diet wherever he goes, without skimping on taste.
So, Scott, any tips to pass along to others thinking about going veggie, or even vegan?
“It’s really not that hard once you get things down,” he said. “You just have to be a little creative. Sometimes you may not find a great vegetarian protein source in a restaurant — no tofu, for instance. So you can do something like add chick peas to salad. Ethnic foods are good, too. Mexican beans, Asian tofu, Indian lentils. [To] some people it’s this weird diet. But most grocery stores have a plethora of foods. Just keep variety in your diet, and you’ll be good.”
Related Posts:
Vegetarian Athletes: The Baseball Player
December 17th, 2009
Related Posts:
A Tale of Two Cattle
December 10th, 2009How did your hamburger get to your plate — and what did it eat along the way?
The journey of beef illustrates the great American food chain
ORGANIC (1% of all cattle)
This is the way all beef used to be raised — and how some people still imagine it is.
Bill Niman tends a small herd with one of the lightest hands in the business and produces what Bay Area chefs swear is unparalleled beef
Diet: Grass
Niman’s cows eat only grass, along with a smattering of hay. That’s the normal diet for cattle. Their rumen, a digestive organ, can break down grasses we’d find inedible
Supplements: None
Niman gives no supplements whatsoever to his cattle — no drugs, no hormones, no additives. That’s not ironclad for organic beef — some companies might use antimicrobials — but generally the animals are supplement-free
Environmental Impact: Living with the Land
To prevent his ranch from becoming overgrazed, Niman shifts his cattle around the land, ensuring that the grass has time to recover between feedings. The result is a surprisingly low-impact hamburger, since grass doesn’t need chemical fertilizer to grow and its presence helps prevent soil erosion. There’s no need to clean up manure — with Niman’s low cattle density, the waste just fertilizes the land
Human Impact: The Omega Effect
Beef has a bad rep among nutritionists, but that might be partly unfair for grass-fed steaks. According to research from the University of California, grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin E and omega-3 fatty acids than conventional beef
CONVENTIONAL (99% of all cattle)
The vast majority of all American cattle start off on open ranges, but that’s where the similarity to their organic cousins ends. They’re shifted after a few months to the tight quarters of an industrial feedlot, to be fattened up as fast as possible
Diet: Grass and corn
Conventional cattle feed off grass pasture for the first several months, but at the feedlot, they’re switched to a heavily corn-based diet, which makes them gain weight faster but also makes them get sick more easily
Supplements: Chemicals
In part to help them survive the crowded conditions of feedlots, where infections can spread fast, conventional cattle are given antibiotics in their feed, and sometimes growth hormones, bloods and fats
Environmental Impact: Waste
A 1,000-head feedlot produces up to 280 tons of manure a week, and the smell can be powerful. All that feed corn requires millions of tons of fertilizer and, ultimately, a lot of petroleum
Human Impact: Fat Attack
Feeding corn to cattle for the last several months of their lives doesn’t just get them fatter faster; it also changes the quality of the beef. Corn helps produce that marbled taste many of us love, but it can result in beef that is higher in fat — helping to fuel the obesity epidemic
____________________
Breakfast: Cereal & soy milk
Lunch: Mushroom ravioli
Dinner: Veggie burger (from the frozen aisle)
Related Posts:
Vegetarian Athletes: The Mixed Martial Arts Fighter
September 25th, 2009The Mixed Martial Arts Fighter
From espn.com
For all the health and performance reasons an athlete might consider when switching to a meatless diet — cutting out animal fats, introducing a broader range of vitamins and nutrients — occasionally you’ll find an athlete who makes the switch for entirely different reasons. In Mac Danzig’s case, it takes awhile to fully digest the idea.
At a ripped 5-foot-9, 155 pounds, Danzig is a rising star in mixed martial arts. He fights under the direction of the Xtreme Couture gym in Las Vegas, training with some of the biggest names in the sport. To succeed in mixed martial arts, competitors must wield explosive strength, the kind typically linked to high-protein foods. When your job is to clobber other men into submission, a meaty diet seems like a given.
“I believed what everybody said,” Danzig confirmed, “that you need animal protein in your diet if you’re going to train hard and win.”
Mac Danzig doesn’t seem hindered by his vegan diet. Just ask his bloodied and battered opponent.That path butted up against beliefs he’d held since childhood. Raised by his single mom in western Pennsylvania, Danzig loved animals and has owned pets throughout his life. A nature lover from a young age, his mother would take him camping and hiking any chance they could get. He’d go to his grandmother’s house in the woods and watch the birds, so much so that he learned how to identify them, cataloging each bird in a guidebook. While other kids watched cartoons, the precocious Danzig was watching “Nova,” “National Geographic” and any other nature specials he could find. When he finally switched to an all-vegan diet four years ago, he did so for ethical reasons, primarily his love of animals and his concern for the environment.He’d always wanted to go vegetarian, but he and his mom had never thought they’d had the resources to do it. His surroundings also made that kind of lifestyle change seem impossible.
“Western Pennsylvania was the same as a lot of Midwest areas,” Danzig said. “There were regular grocery stores, Denny’s — that was about it. No one around us was doing anything like that, going vegetarian or vegan. So it didn’t happen.”
In 1999, right before he started training to become an MMA fighter, Danzig got a job at an animal sanctuary. The people who owned and operated the place were vegans and showed him that a meatless diet could be healthy and affordable if done the right way. But there was another side to their education.
“They just seemed like these fanatical vegan people,” he said. “They kind of wore it on their sleeve, and I wasn’t into that. I said to myself that I’d want to do it one day. But with my training about to start, I didn’t think the time was right. I thought, maybe after I have a successful career, I could try it then.”
Danzig dove into his training, determined to make a career out of his love for MMA competition. First he took up jiu-jitsu, then submission grappling. In 2002, he moved to California to train more seriously and compete full time. He found early success, rising to the rank of lightweight champion and winning the King of the Cage competition. To further advance his career, he entered the UFC-sponsored reality series “The Ultimate Fighter,” which he also went on to win, raising his celebrity status in the sport.
As his career evolved, so did his diet. He’d already cut out all dairy products years ago, as they’d given him health problems, all the way up to debilitating ear infections, sinus problems and even vertigo. He then stopped eating mammals entirely. But poultry and fish remained staples of his diet. In 2004, he took the next step, cutting out poultry and fish and going entirely vegan. His role model was strength and conditioning instructor Mike Mahler. Danzig followed Mahler’s diet down to the smallest detail. If this famed fitness guru could do it, that was proof enough for Danzig that he could do it, too. Danzig won his first fight after the switch, giving him further inspiration.
“I felt really good for that fight,” he said. “I didn’t have any problems with strength, didn’t feel weak. I had cravings for about a month, then they stopped. I haven’t had any cravings since.”
Though Danzig at first feared a meatless diet would hurt his performance, he now says it has helped him recover faster from fights and workouts. Rather than heavy weightlifting, Danzig’s training focuses on plyometrics (rapid muscle stretching and muscle contracting), calisthenics and various cardiovascular routines. He hasn’t lost any strength, he said, and his endurance has improved, allowing him to work out longer and recover more quickly.
In the meantime, Danzig has continued to build up his career. Fighting in UFC 83 in April, he battled jiu-jitsu expert Mark Bocek for 14 minutes before forcing his opponent to submit to a choke hold. The fight was Danzig’s first since winning the finale of “The Ultimate Fighter” and moving to the lightweight division.
Other challenges remain. Though his training partners and fellow competitors have respected his dietary decisions, some MMA fans have lashed out at Danzig.
“I’ve noticed a lot of negative things said about me, saying ‘Who does he think he is?’” Danzig explained. “So many people who are vegetarian or especially vegan, really wear it on their sleeve, like they’re part of some exclusive club. That’s not my style.”
Instead, Danzig is content to be, as some friends call him, a nature boy. When not slapping submission holds on opponents, he’s passionate about backpacking. He has developed his second career, Mac Danzig Photography, and specializes in taking pictures of natural landscapes. And he’s sticking to his convictions, both inside and outside the octagon.
“What I’m doing might be just a drop in the bucket,” he mused. “My whole philosophy is not that it’s bad necessarily — we are omnivores, with the ability to survive on both. But in this day and age, I don’t want to contribute to the meat and dairy industries if it’s not necessary. That’s not just for the animals. It’s for the Earth, too.”
Related Posts:
White House Farmer's Market
September 17th, 2009Two posts back-to-back?! I just found this and thought it was a more than worthy reason to double-post today.
The White House Farmer’s Market opens today, demonstrating to all of the United States that the current administration is supportive of sustainable, healthy, humane, local food sources.
You can bet this is where I’ll be after work today!
Related Posts:
In Good Company
September 17th, 2009Coincidence that many of the most brilliant minds are vegetarian? I think not!
Think a veggie diet is only for frail pansies? These professional athletes beg to differ.
More moved by star power than brains & brawn? The list of red carpet vegetarians is unbelievably extensive.
Check out this (incomplete, continuously growing) list of famous vegetarians.
Related Posts:
Organic: So much more than healthy
August 27th, 2009Organic is not just about food. It’s a much more expansive way of thinking that embraces cyclical resource use, where waste from one source becomes food for another. It honors natural laws and detests mindless waste, dispersal of toxic chemicals, cheap substitutes, and depleted soil.
All of humanity ate organic food until the twentieth century. Now, we’ve been on a chemical binge diet for about 80 years (a blink of an eye in planetary history) and what do we have to show for it? We’ve lost 1/3 of America’s topsoil, buried toxic waste everywhere, polluted & depleted water systems, worsened global warming, and exacerbated ailments ranging from cancer to diabetes to obesity.
This is not just hippie blather preaching the tofu way to happiness. I see organic as a philosophy of wholeness, a science of integration, and a crucial way to maintain nature’s ingenious, delicate, interdependent web of life. It is a pragmatic state of mind offering real solutions to some of society’s worst problems.
Organic backs a sensible farm policy that protects not only farmers, but also the health of all Americans. It can lower health-care costs by eliminating toxic lifestyles and the unnecessary, preventable diseases they cause. It could even help stabilize fuel prices & reduce our dependence of foreign oil by using less fossil fuels & chemicals, and trapping and building carbon in the soil instead of the atmosphere. Organic farming is an absolutely critical WME (weapon of mass enlightenment) in humanity’s now-or-never fight against global warming.
I often fear that I am preaching to the choir, an unheard voice in an uncaring world. It takes more than one to make a difference and I can only hope that consumers the world over will vote with their pocketbooks to save the Earth (and their health along with it).
____________________
Breakfast: Strawberries
Lunch: Pasta primavera
Dinner: Vegetarian Chili
Related Posts:
Time Magazine on "The High Price of Cheap Food"
August 25th, 2009Time Magazine has an excellent article this week about America’s food crisis. Here are a few excerpts, but be sure to read the full article here.
“Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won’t bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He’s fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he’ll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That’s the state of your bacon — circa 2009.”
“The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. Those hidden prices are the creeping erosion of our fertile farmland, cages for egg-laying chickens so packed that the birds can’t even raise their wings and the scary rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among farm animals. Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming — our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.”
“And perhaps worst of all, our food is increasingly bad for us, even dangerous. A series of recalls involving contaminated foods this year — including an outbreak of salmonella from tainted peanuts that killed at least eight people and sickened 600 — has consumers rightly worried about the safety of their meals. A food system — from seed to 7‑Eleven — that generates cheap, filling food at the literal expense of healthier produce is also a principal cause of America’s obesity epidemic. At a time when the nation is close to a civil war over health-care reform, obesity adds $147 billion a year to our doctor bills.”
“With the exhaustion of the soil, the impact of global warming and the inevitably rising price of oil — which will affect everything from fertilizer to supermarket electricity bills — our industrial style of food production will end sooner or later. As the developing world grows richer, hundreds of millions of people will want to shift to the same calorie-heavy, protein-rich diet that has made Americans so unhealthy — demand for meat and poultry worldwide is set to rise 25% by 2015 — but the earth can no longer deliver. Unless Americans radically rethink the way they grow and consume food, they face a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste. Sustainable food has an élitist reputation, but each of us depends on the soil, animals and plants — and as every farmer knows, if you don’t take care of your land, it can’t take care of you.”
The full article contains more on the impact of corn subsidies, fertilizers & pesticides, the overuse of antibiotics in CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations), and the impact to our American farmers. The article also profiles a few farms & businesses (such as Chipotle) that are successfully working to make a difference.
“Organic food continues to cost on average several times more than its conventional counterparts… But not all costs can be measured by a price tag. Once you factor in crop subsidies, ecological damage and what we pay in health-care bills after our fatty, sugary diet makes us sick, conventionally produced food looks a lot pricier.”
“What we really need to do is something Americans have never done well, and that’s to quit thinking big. We already eat four times as much meat and dairy as the rest of the world, and there’s not a nutritionist on the planet who would argue that 24‑oz. steaks and mounds of buttery mashed potatoes are what any person needs to stay alive.”
“[W]e have the chance to choose better food three times a day (or more often, if we’re particularly hungry). It’s true that most of us would prefer not to think too much about where our food comes from or what it’s doing to the planet [...] But if there’s one difference between industrial agriculture and the emerging alternative, it’s that very thing: consciousness.”
____________________
Breakfast: cereal & soy milk
Lunch: Chipotle burrito bol, no meat = free guac!
Dinner: General Tso’s TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein), very yummy
The Dirty Six
August 21st, 2009In just one hour in the US, more than 1 million animals are killed for food. Before their slaughter, they endure a life of abuse. Considering that nearly 10 billion animals each year are treated as production units rather than social, intelligent animals, this is the gravest animal welfare problem in the country.
The Humane Society of the United States has identified the six worst animal practices in agribusiness:
1. Battery Cages
In the US, 95% of egg-laying hens are confined to battery cages: small wire enclosures stacked several tiers high, extending down long rows, inside windowless warehouses. These cages offer less space per hen than the area of a single piece of paper. The birds are so cramped that they are unable to spread their wings. While many countries are banning these abusive battery cages, the US still overcrowds 300 million hens in these cruel enclosures.
2. Fast Growth of Birds
More than 9 out of 10 land animals killed for human consumption in the US are chickens. About 9 billion are slaughtered each year. The chicken industry’s use of growth-promoting antibiotics has produced birds whose bodies struggle to function and are on the verge of structural collapse. (To put their growth rate into perspective, the University of Arkansas reports that if humans grew as fast as today’s chickens, we’d weigh 349 pounds by our second birthday.) Ninety percent of chickens have detectable leg problems and structural deformities. More than 25% suffer from chronic pain due to bone disease.
3. Forced Feeding for Foie Gras
French for “fatty liver,” the delicacy known as pate de foie gras is produced from the grossly enlarged liver of a duck or goose. Two to three times a day for several weeks, the birds are force-fed enormous quantities of food through a long pipe thrust down their throats to their stomachs. This deliberate overfeeding causes the birds’ livers to swell to as much as ten times their normal size. This impairs liver function, expands their abdomens, and makes movements as simple as standing or walking difficult and painful. Several European countries have banned the force-feeding of birds for foie gras.
4. Gestation Crates and Veal Crates
During their 4-month pregnancies, 60-70% of female pigs in the US are kept in gestation crates: individual metal stalls so small and narrow that the animals can’t even turn around or move more than one step forward or backward. Similarly, calves raised for veal are confined in restrictive crates, generally chained by the neck, that prohibit them from turning around. This takes an enormous mental and physical toll on the animals. Both of these practices are being phased out in the EU because of their abusive, inhumane nature, but they are still in use in the US.
5. Long-Distance Transport
Billions of animals endure the rigors of transport around the country. Overcrowded onto trucks that do not provide any protection from very hot and very cold weather, animals travel days without food, water, or rest. The conditions are so stressful that in-transit death is considered common.
6. Electric Stunning of Birds
At the slaughter plant, birds are moved off trucks, dumped from transport crates onto conveyors, and hung upside down by their legs in shackles. Their heads pass though electrified baths of water, intended to immobilize them before their throats are slit. From beginning to end, the entire process is filled with pain & suffering. Federal regulations do not require that birds be rendered insensible before they are slaughtered. The shackling of their legs causes pain, increased in those already suffering from leg disorders (see #2) or broken bones. Electric stunning has been found to be ineffective in consistently inducing unconsciousness.
You Can Help
Don’t support the cruelties endured by these animals.
-Refine your diet by eliminating the most abusive animal products.
-Reduce your consumption of animal products
-Replace animal products in your diet with vegetarian options
-Only consume animal products that are locally and humanely raised (try your local farmers’ market)
____________________
Breakfast: English muffin with jelly
Lunch: Veggie sub from Quizno’s
Dinner: Cheeseless pizza loaded with spinach, mushrooms, onion, bell peppers, olives, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and garlic
Growing Local Farm Movement
August 11th, 2009Last week, CNN reported on the growing local food movement, or Community Supported Agricurture (CSAs). From the article:
[The farmers] describe their farming technique as “beyond organic,” saying they use no artificial fertilizers, growth hormones or antibiotics and don’t keep their animals penned up.
Life on their property — where cattle and sheep graze in open fields and chickens follow along to clean up after them — looks much like the classic image of a family farm. [The Farmers] say they consider themselves healers to both their customers and, according to their Web site, a food system that “had become a machine with little regard for food safety, food taste and animal welfare.”
“People are becoming very disconnected from the food system,” Liz Young said. “Buying from a local CSA or just shopping at a local farm, you can see where it’s coming from. You can talk to the farmers and figure out how the animals or the produce is raised.
…
Members of the nation’s handful of meat CSAs, and the thousands of others, offer a list of reasons.
The food is healthier and tastes better, they say. They like supporting their local economy. Eliminating cross-country delivery is better for the environment, as are the sustainable farming techniques the farmers tend to use.
“Being part of a CSA means that I know the first names of the people who are raising the meat I eat,” said Andrew Johnson of Kansas City, Missouri, a member of the Parker Farms meat CSA in Richmond, Missouri. “Whereas, with the meat I buy from the grocery store, I don’t know where it came from or who raised it.”
Others say they appreciate that animals from the usually small family farms don’t spend their lives in processing plants, conditions that advocates call inhumane.
Because CSA members deal with the farmers directly, they are able to visit the farms and see exactly how their food is produced. The transparency, they say, creates an incentive for farmers to raise their animals as naturally as possible.
…
“Is it as cheap as the lowest-price chicken in the grocery store? Absolutely not,” Tim Young said. “But with our prices and the prices of any sustainable farmer, you’ve got everything baked in: the cost to the environment, the cost to the health care system, the cost of producing that animal [in a humane way].”
“I don’t think it is significant, but if it does end up costing a bit more, it is still important to us to make this a priority,” he said. “There are other expenses I am willing to give up rather than give up a safe, trusted food source.”
____________________
Breakfast: Bagel with “better than cream cheese” (a non-dairy cream cheese subsitute)
Lunch: Veggie sub with avocado, lettuce, tomato, sprouts, shredded carrots, vinegar & oil
Diner: Burrito with beans, rice, zucchini, squash, peppers & salsa
