The Start line Thinking as a runner, I view healthy eating as the ‘Start Line’ for the event of sports nutrition. Getting a good start allows you to build speed, overcome hurdles, reduce injury and ultimately beat your PB time after time. While there is no denying that specialized nutritional strategies can give an edge, they can only be effective when the athlete is building on a solid foundation of healthy eating. This article focuses on the healthy eating diet which will provide all the calories, protein, vitamins and minerals required for day to day life. On the rationale of learning to walk before we can run, subsequent articles will look at nutritional strategies for training, events and recovery but in order to benefit from these, I recommend you start using the Food Pyramid today. Athletes who have mastered the Food Pyramid, have much to gain from further nutritional strategies in training, events and recovery. They have an understanding of the essential components of the diet and their functions. They can clearly identify food groups which play a role in improving the performance or enhancing recovery, and therefore they can make informed decisions about their intake without having to follow a very strict or limited diet plan.
The Food Pyramid balances foods in the amounts needed to make sure that you get all the energy and vitality that you need. Foods that contain similar nourishment are grouped together and can be interchanged, as seen in the shelf system. This allows you the flexibility of choice and provides the variety you need for good health.
You can see at a glance that most of your food should come from the bread cereals and potatoes shelf and from the fruit and vegetable shelf. The more active you are, the higher your energy needs will be. Energy should come from the bread, cereals and potatoes shelf, and from the fruit and vegetable shelf. Together these two shelves provide the majority of your carbohydrate, fibre, vitamin and minerals requirements.
For many reasons it is more appropriate for athletes to choose a low-fat option from the dairy shelf, these play an important role both in pre-event, and recovery strategies and so choosing low-fat dairy products is a good habit to form at this stage. Also, choose lean meat options from the meat shelf and be aware of portion sizes (…probably smaller than you may be used too!!)
Fats, biscuits, cakes, confectionary and high-fat food snacks can be enjoyed as part of a healthy eating plan, but in limited amounts. While certainly there is a role for refined carbohydrate and sugar in sport, on a day to day basis it better to get sugar and carbohydrate from the bottom two shelves of the pyramid.
Choosing foods from each shelf in the food pyramid in the correct amounts will provide you with the balance of energy, protein vitamins and minerals you need each day.
Always ensure you are drinking recommended volume of fluid each day. The more fluid you drink the more your body tolerates and remember thirst is a very poor indicator of hydration status. Making drinking throughout the day a habit is by far the most successful way of meeting requirements every day.
Ruth Kilcawley
BSc Human Nutrition & Dietetics
If you want to know what nutrition is, I strongly recommend you read or listen to “The China Study – startling implications for diet, weightloss and longterm health”,
by T. Colin Campbell, Emeritus Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, NY, U.S.A.
This is an outstanding piece of work based on the longest study of nutrition and it’s connection to health and disease that has ever been conducted.
Campbell has worked at the forefront of Nutritional Biochemistry for over 40 years.
It’s available on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk and can be ordered in any good bookshop in Ireland.
Reading or listening to this may save your life.
Diet for a New America (John Robbins) is also an exellent book that changed my life dramatically for the better.
Anonymous, Thank you for your contribution, however I feel it is important to point out the following.
The Food guide pyramid is currently the recognised and accepted best practice method of promoting healthy eating in Ireland at present. While it may seem quite basic, it incorporates foods in quantities which have been shown repeatedly to benefit health and protect against disease. the beauty of this guide is that it allows people to eat a healthy and nutritious diet based on sound nutritional rationale.
I am familiar with the highly controversial work of Mr Campell, but i, like all of my profession, base my advice on sound evidence based, best practice guidelines which take all works into account as opposed to singular authors who may have other motives (the promotion of veganism for example).
Nutrition is an evolving science of that there is no doubt, but also a very complex one. the role of a dietitian is to desseminate nutritional findings and provide guidance on how we can use nutrition to promote health and protect against disease, or in this forum enhance athletic performance. There is always a danger in simply looking at diet from a singular perpective.
Chronic Disease prevention is multifactorial. From a dietary perspective many of the same issues Mr Campell highlights such as overconsumption of animal protein are incorporated into the food pyramid as you will notice in that ony two portions (120g/day) of meat are recommended per day, when the actual consumption in Ireland and All western Countries is much greater.
However there are so many other factors which have far superior quality evidence.
My role here is to advise athletes on how they can eat healthily taking account of their sport, the role of nutrition in chronic disease and the latest books advocating thier own take on it, is a very interesting topic, but perhaps it is not appropriate here.
Ruth Kilcawley
BSc. Human Nutrition Dip. Dietitics
MINDI SNIG
Well done Ruth, you seem to have the right balanced attitude! A lot of the eating problems people seem to have today, including athletes is there is such a diversity of information that it can seem daunting at times. I work as a hypnotherapist and am currently studying nutritional therapy but as a runner i appreciate how people feel they are being pulled in every direction, sometimes unfortunately by authors who have underlying interests for a particular product, which is why i find your comments refreshing. Nutrition, as with performance, (see Niamh Flynn, this site) is an individual thing for every athlete, depending on metabolism, level of training, type of training etc. In hypnotherapy sessions for weight management i often find that people are often disillusioned, having tried many diets, feel they have worked so hard at it, only to put the weight back on again. Being a nutritionist i have a good idea what your opinion would be on these restrictive regimes. Well done, we may discuss again sometime!
John Connolly Dip.Hyp
Member of National Guild of Hypnotists
[email protected]
Thanks for such a sensible balanced reply Ruth. Keeping the focus on the basics could help lots of people how are looking for the ‘big secret ‘of sports nutrition, whilst all the time ignoring the importance of basic balance and healthy eating…most people would probably find that if they take a close look at their own daily intake there are gaps that can be worked on to make sure they are meeting the recommended number of servings from each shelf, be it either increasing or decreasing various foods. Challenge yourself to achieve the basics first!
I must say, I agree with the skeptical poster. To suggest that Dr. Campbell (who is Professor Emeritus of Endocrinology at Cornell, not some mad quack on the fringes of science) wrote his paper to further his own agenda bring up a question of motive. What does he stand to gain by promoting a diet that falls outside of the mainstream scope of dietary choices? I think that he stands to lose more than he would gain if it were to be found out that his data were intentionally skewed in order to support his personal dietary choices.
The food pyramid itself is highly controversial. It was created by the USDA & Dept. of HHS under pressure from groups lobbying for dairy producers, meat producers, and of course, junk food producers. You could even argue that this is why there is the “fats & sweets” bit included at the top. I doubt that anyone would agree that you actually *need* those biscuits. If an agenda is being pushed, perhaps it is here.
The comment page for the upcoming 2010 revision of the guidelines is quite interesting and there are many comments from people besides Dr. Campbell who also advocate a plant-based diet.
See: https://usda-cnpp.entellitrak.com/etk-usda-cnpp-2.8.0-prod/login.request.do?service=%2Ftracking.dashBoard.do (Hopefully this link works, click on the link to view the comments as that link isn’t static and can’t be copied and pasted)
For someone less interested in reading tedious articles, but interested in the perspective of a vegan athlete, I’d suggest reading “The Thrive Diet”. Some of his suggestions are a bit impractical for a soggy island in the North Atlantic, but it is a good read and gives some interesting insights on diet and performance.
Hello,
This isn’t going to contribute much to the discussion but, I was wondering if anybody can give me advice for protein intake in a vegetarian diet. Is there any veggie foods that contain all 8 essential amino acids? Have you heard of Quinoa?
Cathal B.Eng,
Head of the Dole Q every wednesday