Athletes Looking to Meat as Performance Enhancer

By 2010, the Jets were having US Wellness Meats ship strip loins and ground beef to all the team’s away games.

Although the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), which represents ranchers and feedlots, has contended that grain-fed beef is as good as grass-fed beef, Wood says tests he has had done say the contrary.  He says his grass-fed beef (US Wellness) have more Omega-3′s than salmon, a ratio he says you wouldn’t find in grain-feed beef.

Our Western Diet:  Prescription for Disaster?

The link between arachidonic acid and inflammation is well understood, so if for no other reason, eliminating (or at least minimizing) arachidonic acid is essential to health.  So whether or not you’re eating lots of carbs, you probably really want to minimize your grain/vegetable oil intake.

It was time to make a change.  Hank Garner shares how he lost 100 lbs. in 6 months.

I had a conversation with my wife in early Fall 2010, and told her that I was disgusted with myself and felt like I did not have control of my life anymore. My blood pressure was badly out of control. I had chronic asthma and after any physical exertion I had to use an albuterol inhaler. I watched over the past couple of years as family member after family member was diagnosed with either heart disease or diabetes or both. Some of them were very close to my age. It was time to make a change.

Fun post by CaveGirlEats, chronicling her recent shopping trip to Whole Paycheck, I mean Whole Foods.

Just look at the word “Tofurky.” Stare at it for 30 seconds. It’s a weird, creepy word. Like, shouldn’t be allowed within 20 yards of an elementary school creepy.  And why do they feel the need to euphemize a meat-like word such as “Turkey” but still use the word “pepperoni” like it’s NOT the name for a mash-up of delightfully gross piggy by-products? Next, there is no such thing as “Ham Style.” There is only Ham. It comes from a dead pig and it is Dee-licious.

Are Low-Carb Meat Eaters in Trouble?  Denise Minger debunks latest study.

Bottom line: In this study, when you look closer at the data, differences in mortality appear to be unrelated to animal product consumption. Changes in cancer and cardiovascular risk ratios occur out of sync with changes in animal food intake.

Is Fish Oil Linked to Prostate Cancer?

Even though this study doesn’t give any reason to shun fatty fish or their oils, it’s a nice segue into a related issue: A bad diet plus fish oil is still a bad diet. And given the oxidation-prone nature of all polyunsaturated fats, a massive intake of omega-3’s – despite their brilliance in moderation – could potentially do more harm than good. If you’re trying to restore a healthy ratio of omega fats, avoiding omega-6-rich foods (and supplementing wisely) is a better strategy than chugging fish oil like a frat boy with gin.

Omega-3 Fats, Angiogenesis, and Cancer:  Part I

Omega-3 Fats, Angiogenesis, and Cancer:  Part II

Do Calories Count?  1st Law of Thermo (Part 1)

Do Calories Count?  1st Law of Thermo (Part 2)

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I found an interesting article about Long Beach.  This weekend they are unveiling the first protected bike lanes west of New York City. For cycling enthusiasts, downtown Long Beach offers bike rentals conveniently located on the First Street Transit Mall, within easy walking distance of the gymnastics venue.  There are also dedicated bike paths along the shoreline and the nearby Los Angeles River.

In the two weeks leading up to JO Nationals, I’ll be tweeting some videos taken at the recent Region 1 Championships.  Be sure to follow on Twitter.

Blythe Lawrence was all over Japan’s Kohei Uchimura’s 94.90 at the Japanese Championships.  Good..night..nurse.  Here’s his line score… 15.85, 15.60, 15.20, 16.60, 15.75 & 15.90.  He easily has the world’s best AA score of the quadrennium.  With the exception of rings, those are all Olympic podiumesque numbers.  We wish this young man good health between now and next July.  The Olympics wouldn’t be the same without him.  Sadly, his teammate Koji Uematsu (world team member) tore his ACL just before the Japanese Championships.  His recovery timeline should put him in decent shape for 2012.  In the meantime, I have a feeling we’ll be in for quite another show at this year’s Worlds.

Cal Gymnastics Forever sent out another update, after their meeting with the incoming Chancellor John Wilton.  It sounds encouraging, and it was mentioned that philanthropist Doug Goldman pledged $160K (spread over 8 years), contingent upon four other donors making a similar pledge.  I have a strong feeling that the Cal men will receive at least a one-year reinstatement, which would bode well for a long-term deal.  Cal’s recruiting efforts have already been screwed for next season, but at least they have plenty of fuel in the tank to be highly competitive, if not title contenders.

In a new segment, which I hope you’ll like, is our new offering of providing links to the past week’s interesting articles on fitness and nutrition.  The first link (Is Sugar Toxic?) is a must read.  Disclaimer:  I do not have a professional nutritional/fitness background, but I do have a well-informed bias on the chosen subject matter.

Health Links of the Week:

Is Sugar Toxic?

What’s the Single Best Exercise?

Low Carb Diet May Reverse Kidney Failure in People with Diabetes

Weight Loss:  The Futility of the Exercise

Interesting charts showing avg. daily per capita calories available from U.S. food supply over the past 40 years.  It can be surmised from this chart that the additional fat availability consists mainly of unhealthy vegetable oils.

Quaker Oats for Breakfast, Diabetes for Lunch?

HDL and Immunity

How to raise HDL

Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (Silent Epidemic of Nutritional Imbalance)

What are “Normal” Triglycerides?

Happy Easter and Chag Sameach!

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Wolf’s solid background in biochemistry lends serious credibility to his convincing argument.  He nicely explains how the body processes and digests protein, carbohydrates and fats in layman’s terms, sprinkled with dabs of “geekspeak” and good humor.  While the paleo community is not necessarily harmonious in all aspects of the diet/lifestyle (though they usually do not sweat the little differences), they are generally in agreement on the big thing.  The big thing is avoiding grains (especially wheat) and gluten.  One of the little differences is the consumption of potatoes and dairy products.  Wolf hedges on eggs somewhat, but qualifies his stance with his recommendation that those with an autoimmune condition should not eat them.  Otherwise, he says to go for it, and recommends omega-3-enriched eggs.  Purists would recommend the pastured variety, cooked in virgin coconut oil or pastured butter, of course.

Healthy fats:

• Virgin coconut oil
• Palm oil
• Butter
• Ghee (clarified butter)
• Tallow
• Lard
• Olive oil (in moderation/better not to cook with it)

Fats to avoid (partial list):

• Corn oil
• Canola oil
• Sunflower oil
• Safflower oil
• Peanut oil
• Cottonseed oil
• Soybean oil
• Wheat germ oil
• Margarine
• All hydrogenated oil

Many health-conscious people are familiar with the paleo diet, but stubbornly stick to their choice of opting for allegedly healthy carbs like whole wheat bread and whole wheat pasta.  A lot of these people have already done away with processed foods, controlled their sugar, increased their intake of N-3 oils, reduced their intake of N-6 oils and have started buying grassfed beef and free range chicken.  But as they do more research, more and more people are deciding to try the paleo diet.  The diet is so simple; yet removing grains, the ubiquitous substance filling every corner of the modern diet, is radical indeed.

One thing is certain, the paleo diet can be tailored to those involved in high-level athletic pursuits like gymnastics.  The amount of carbohydrates can be adjusted upwards, but only if they are sourced via fruits and vegetables.  The non-athletes striving for weight loss would need to be more vigilant in limiting their carbs, especially fruits.

<Click here to see a list of encouraged foods and those to avoid>

Wolf provides easy-to-follow dietary guidelines, meal plans and a list of the necessary bloodwork protocols to dictate to your doctor.  The additional items he adds to the normally prescribed lipid panel tests are necessary to chart your progress.  Cholesterol testing is important, but a standard test is incomplete without knowing whether or not your LDL contains large particles or small dense particles (large fluffy particles are good!).  Tests for glycated hemoglobin and C-reactive protein are the other critical add-ons for your bloodwork.  The former measures how much sugar sticks to your red blood cells, and can tell you much about your nutrition and lifestyle.  The latter is a significant marker for systemic inflammation.

He also goes into great detail about how stress and the lack of sleep (increase in cortisol) interfere with good health.  Wolf’s status as a renowned strength and conditioning coach in Northern California lends much credence to his lengthy chapter on ancestral fitness.  The overarching philosophy of the paleo diet and lifestyle emphasizes our early ancestors’ active and vigorous lifestyle as hunter-gatherers.  He wraps things up nicely with a chapter on supplements where he carefully explains why he recommends only a handful:  Vitamin D3, fish oil, magnesium, iodine, digestive aids, and probiotics.  After all, we should be able to obtain plenty of vital nutrients from food alone, but Wolf deftly explains why we may need a little help to varying degrees depending on the individual.

Much alternative medicine/nutrition gets pejorative treatment by those who continue to latch on to traditional evidence-based practice.  A paleo diet falls into a category on which even the other alternative diet “experts” cast aspersions.  And our government, the majority of the healthcare profession, and the pharmaceutical industry all stubbornly continue to prescribe a low fat/high-carb diet, when this prescription is contributing to, and is arguably directly responsible for, the expanding obesity epidemic.  The number of people who suffer from inflammatory and autoimmune diseases is staggering, and continues to grow exponentially.  Too many people are growing old well before their time.  Wolf makes a passionately credible argument for a paleo solution to all of this.  As he says, “Paleo works, but only if you do it. Most folks tackle this as a ‘diet’ initially, but it morphs into a viable, long term lifestyle.”

Nutrition journalists have yet to correctly describe Paleo.  They always miscontrue and mangle the nuances.  Paleo is not strictly a low-carb regimen for weight loss, though it can be.  Dairy, white rice and potatoes are OK if your body can handle it.  Paleo is not a cookie-cutter or one-size-fits-all diet.  Quite simply, it can be described as just eating real food.  More descriptively, Paleo is the essence of avoiding the neolithic agents of disease–1) grains (wheat/gluten) 2) excess/added sugar (fructose) 3) bad industrial seed oils (canola, corn, sunflower, etc.).  By definition, Paleo is NOT a low-carb diet, but it can be.

Personally, we at StickItMedia began the paleo diet about two months before reading Wolf’s book, and we were pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to avoid breads, cookies, pasta, pizza, and even rice once you start.  Believe it or not, the cravings for these foods come from eating them.  Just remember that if you try the paleo diet, when you end up with the inevitably great results, don’t be surprised if your doctor ends up saying, “It must be something else!”

Here are links to some great paleo blogs:

Robb Wolf’s blog

Heart Scan Blog – published by Dr. William Davis, a renowned cardiologist and author of Track Your Plaque, which shows how to use the new heart scans to detect, track and control coronary plaque.

Free the Animal – published by Richard Nikoley, who dishes out a prolific amount of insightful, biting commentary.  Richard is famous for showing off his great food porn.

Whole Health Source – published by Stephan Guyenet, who studies and conveys time-tested strategies for achieving and maintaining health and well-being.  Stephan professionally studies the neurobiology of body fat regulation.

Mark’s Daily Apple – published by Mark Sisson, author of The Primal Blueprint, a book that “pokes holes in flawed conventional wisdom about diet and exercise.

The Paleo Diet – a blog based on the lifework of Dr. Loren Cordain, acknowledged as a leading expert on the diet of our paleolithic ancestors.

Dr. Michael Eades’ blog explores he and his wife’s research of refining the science of weight loss.  Author of such best-selling books as Protein Power.

The Daily Lipid is the blog of Chris Masterjohn that explores uncovering the truth about cholesterol.

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Several top club gymnasts will soon be entering their final season of competition.  Among the many standouts include Jacoby Rubin, Dylan Akers, Adrian De Los Angeles, Craig Hernandez, Jesse Glenn and Josh Glenn.  These gymnasts will be soon be signing letters of intent to compete at the NCAA level next season.  Rumors are abound about which colleges will be landing this stellar class of talent, and it will be interesting to find out how things pan out.  We will find out as soon as November.

The first of two international assignments for our Junior men is coming up soon in Lilleshall, Great Britain October 10-17.  This will be a joint training camp/competition among the U.S., Great Britain and Switzerland.  Adrian De Los Angeles (SCATS), Jonathan Deaton (Daggett’s), Stacey Ervin (Mills), Sean Melton (Orlando Metro), Timmy Wang (South Coast) and Yul Moldauer (5280) will represent Team USA.  This is a very exciting opportunity for these Junior elite athletes.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the axe may fall on as many as 5-7 Cal varsity sports programs (most of them men’s programs) as early as next week.  Cal’s storied men’s rugby program, along with their prestigious men’s gymnastics program, could be the unfortunate recipients of the anticipated budget-cutting shenanigans.  According to the article, Cal has 150 more male athletes than their female counterparts, which has much dreaded Title IX implications.  Obviously, Cal’s football program accounts for a drastic skewing of the numbers.  Wouldn’t it be nice to remove football from the Title IX equation?  A lot of male athletes at Cal are about to get screwed.  Our friends at The College Sports Council are all over this story.

Gym Examiner Blythe Lawrence reports that three of Brazil’s top male gymnasts will not be competing at next month’s World Championships.  World Champion Diego Hypolito, Arthur Zanetti and Victor Rosa are out of the competition due to injury.  All is not lost for the Brazilians, as they will still have an opportunity next year to qualify for the ’12 Olympics.

Robb Wolf’s seminal work about the increasingly popular paleolithic lifestyle, The Paleo Solution:  The Original Human Diet, is currently #10 on Amazon’s list of top sellers.  This is definitely a book worth checking out.  Wolf is a former research biochemist and current strength and conditioning coach in northern California.

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With everything we now know about nutrition, the effects of breakfast on an athlete’s big day are huge. When Olympians sit down at the table, they most likely refer to what they eat as their pre-competition meal.  The first time an athlete eats in the morning, he or she needs about 500 calories if there are two hours to go before the competition begins.  If the race or game is very early, they can get by with a 100-200 calorie snack.  Studies show that even a small carb with protein snack before a morning workout will give an athlete an endurance advantage.

While a good breakfast needs healthy fruits and vegetables, as well as some whole grain carbohydrates, an athlete has to balance all that fiber against his or her need to have a less active digestive system during competition.  Judges frown on toilet breaks during floor routines.

Athletes need more protein than sedentary people, and they need some of it at each of their meals.  A good steak and eggs, with a piece of fruit, could fuel someone to that elusive gold, especially if the meal contained grass-fed beef , which actually contains some Omega 3 acids.  Dr. Mercola suggests a crock-pot cooked protein meal of lesser expensive cuts of beef, timed to be ready and smelling delicious when the  athlete is lacing his or her training shoes.  And sometimes tradition is right on the money.  Whole eggs are newly (again) found to be perfect little foods, with the yolk and white combining ingeniously to provide excellent nutrition in a small caloric package:  boiled, scrambled, or sunny side up.

Olympic chef Jacque Hamilton is ready to feed our 600-athlete delegation to Beijing.  She is the executive chef of the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, and will provide a full slate of Western meals for the athletes around the clock.  About 18 months ago, she began preparations for a performance-based menu for the U.S. team.  Athletes from various sports need grossly diverging calorie amounts in their diets, but all of them need balanced, nutritionally sound fare.  She’s banished cream and butter, and will be using Barilla plus pasta, which is made from whole grains and contains Omega 3s, in her recipes.

Some of the breakfast items Hamilton will be serving in Beijing will be oatmeal, whole wheat pancakes with sliced peaches, honey-glazed country ham, and sweet potato hash browns.  While Chinese food will abound, and fast food might be within the athletes’ grasp, she hopes to provide some of the comfort foods from home for the athletes, with recipes tweaked just subtly enough to be packed with nutrition for optimum performance for the day.

One item our athletes might not be adding to their muesli bowls is seal penis , but our host competitors might be tempted.  It’s one of the main ingredients in a popular Chinese athletic supplement, ‘Dalishen Oral Liquid.’  Chinese athletes have long relied on secret concoctions that are said to boost performance, and some well-known herbal ingredients have been adopted the world over as health supplements, such as ginseng and green tea.  Some of the others, such as turtle blood, have not caught on.  But what do Chinese athletes eat when they wake up?

The training diet in China is heavier on carbohydrates, about 70% of one’s caloric intake, than the Western version.  Yet Chinese nutritionists know that high-quality protein is still essential, and they tend to choose very nutrient-rich forms of protein to add to the rice and vegetables.  Marinated chicken, bits of fish, vegetables, and local varieties of dim sum constitute a full Chinese breakfast .  Tea is of course essential.  And for the finale, to rival our short stack drenched in maple syrup, they enjoy sticky rice pastries filled with red bean paste.  We at StickItMedia were introduced to them in China and found them addictively delicious.

by Tara Parker-Pope

June 30, 2008

New York Times

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.

[excerpted from above link; the Comments section at the end has a lot of great ideas as well]

Make sure your multi-mineral supplement contains enough magnesium, or, probably even better, just make sure that your summer diet includes at least one leafy green salad a day.  Kids might enjoy a spinach salad or even an omelette stuffed with spinach and turkey bacon.  "I know it’s green, but close your eyes and taste!"