Football, Diet for Footballers

lots of carbs the night before... not too much before the match - unless its at night time - but you would definately want carbs on the day

There is no simple answer to “best diet.” I am currently enrolled in studies in a health field and have taken courses in physiology, microbiology and nutrition and can tell you nutrition is still a developing science with much disagreement among the experts. The confusion is compounded by vested interests pushing their own agenda.

When I was in high school and first starting strength training I bought weight lifting magazines and relied upon them for information. It took me a while to realize that the Wieder magazines, for example, usually had an ad for some supplement or other right next to an article on the benefits of that supplement. I’d like to have back all the money I spent on papaya juice under the impression it would help me digest the massive amounts of protein I was consuming. Later I learned that papain is not present in the ripe fruit, nor the juice thereof, but only in the leaves and green fruit.

Similarly, the US Dept. of Agriculture pimps for the dairy industry by advising on their website and in there literature that the average adult “needs” three glasses of milk a day, without a shred of evidence that that is so. A moment’s thought brings up doubts about how that “need” might have evolved. Their food pyramid, once a sensible guide for eating habits, with the least healthy products sitting in the little pointy section at the top, was resented by the industries that distributed those foods, especially oils and sugar. So they pressured the USDA to change the pyramid. It now has lots of pointy, many-hued stripes running vertically, so as not to stigmatize any food groups in a way that would make them feel badly about themselves, making the whole idea of a “pyramid” sort of pointless. They have added a staircase with a man running up it, to indicate we can eat limitless amounts of oil and sugar; all we have to do is run it off. (There is also a “food slander” law in Texas. Cattlemen there sued TV hostess Oprah Winfrey and her guest Howard Lyman, whom I have met, for badmouthing beef; cattlemen lost.)

So, sorry: no easy answers. As long as you’re exercising regularly you can get away with dietary indiscretions that would be ill-advised for a more sedentary person. Chris’s advice is good; you need carbs to provide your body with the energy your cells need in the form of ATP; carbs are actually more critical to strength workouts than are proteins as you need the energy to complete your workouts. Proteins are converted very slowly, so you simply need to make sure you get enough in your regular diet.

Carbs should be mostly in the unrefined form, except for a small amount just before your competition or workouts for a quick burst (as much for its psychological effect as for its physical effect). Protein, likewise, is best obtained from plant sources; that’s how the gladiators got theirs (just as the health food advocates of today are called “granola crunchers,” gladiators were called “barley crunchers,” perhaps not to their faces). The notion of “high quality” protein coming from meat and “low quality” protein coming from plants is inaccurate and outmoded. Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, had demonstrated in a massive study that humans thrive best, especially long-term, on a vegan diet.

That is not going to go down well, no pun intended, with people who have eaten meat all their lives, but it is clearly documented that our ancestors were vegan and that our physiology remains adapted to a vegan diet. I myself am a near vegan - I have milk in my coffee and don’t go out of my way to avoid breads and pastries prepared with dairy products, but animal products are not a major source of protein for me - and continue to workout, currently in the sport of “catch” wrestling, a form of mixed martial arts, with men a third my age.

Though there is not likely to be a very deep pool of vegan MMA fighters to draw upon, there are at least two very prominent MMA competitors; one, Mac Danzig, recently won the Ultimate Fighting Championship which is the culmination of the Spike TV series Ultimate Fighter. This proves, at least, that one doesn’t need meat.

Needless to say, the subject of diet is a huge one, filling whole libraries of books. I have a number of links to sources of information on my own website at http://www.vset.net. You may have already derived some idea as to the basic viewpoint expressed there.