It’s All Wrong! The Message to Athletes About What to Eat Needs to Change!

Have you ever flipped through the pages of the latest issue of a running, triathlon, or whichever sports magazine might be most appropriate to you, and actually read what is being broadcast to you, as far as what you should eat and drink?

I did just that this morning.

Aside from all the same old ads that you see in each issue, a couple little bits stood out.

  1. An ad for Gatorade which read: " Every hour a billion cells are replaced. Fuel the next generation."

A quick google search on the product reveals what you'd be fueling that next cellular generation with, depending on which of their products you chose to ingest.  They may include:

  • Brominated vegetable oil (used for, as per their own site, 'keeping flavor oils evenly distributed')
  • Artificial color (but don't worry, because their site states that ALL the fake colors and flavors are 'qualified for human consumption according to the FDA's requirements', and we all know how important it is to the FDA that we don't eat anything toxic, and that they only 'use as little as possible to get the desired color')
  • Corn syrup (need I write more?)
  • Sucralose (because athletes apparently need fake sugar made from a chlorination process?)

      2. An article written about eating 'health-boosting foods', the first of which read, verbatim:

'A 2011 study found that having a slushie flavored with sugar syrup pre run can help you run 20% longer than drinking cold water with the same amount of syrup'.

A slushie?  Really?

Why does the message that 'athletes burn lots of calories, so they can eat whatever (non food/junk) they want' even exist?  

Why would an athlete (or someone who is not an athlete, equally) want to treat their body as a trash bin?

If you're putting high demands on your body for athletic performance and punishing it with acidic, refined, processed non-Food and wondering why your performance is suffering, this could very well be the reason.  

On the flip side, if you're eating junk and are performing well nonetheless, imagine how much better/faster/stronger/leaner you might be if you ate real food!