People are waking up to gluten. Team Garmin went totally gluten-free for this year's tour. Because they're celiacs? No, because gluten causes inflammation. (Even beer face.) Here's what Team Garmin had to say about it: [my bolding]
Our special “anti-inflammatory” diet
For years bike racers have lived on pasta as their primary source of carbohydrates. Jonathan Vaughters has often said that he’ll never eat pasta again as long as he lives! At least the over-cooked pasta that is served in most of the race hotels around the world, the exception being the hotels at the Giro.
At this year’s Tour de France, we decided to make a change for our riders. Instead of having pasta and bread every night for dinner we asked our chef, Willy, to prepare rice. And we are giving the riders rice cakes and corn cakes instead of bread. Why? I believe that the high amounts of wheat products that are normally consumed by bike racers at the Tour have an inflammatory effect in the body. I believe that most people have either an overt allergy to wheat products (as Julian Dean demonstrates) or at least a sub-symptomatic inflammatory response to wheat products.
At the Tour de France, one of the biggest goals is to maintain as low a state of inflammation as possible. The amount of inflammation that the riders bodies accumulate during the day is so high that any little bit of help we can give them, and this includes dietary modifications, is essential.
So, our guys are eating very little wheat products (bread, pasta) and also very little red meat (which also has a pro-inflammatory effect on the body). Most of the meals consist of oats (Willy’s porridge in the mornings!), and in the evenings the guys are eating a lot of chicken, turkey and fish.
Yes, they’ve had a couple meals of pasta and red meat. We do need to give them a bit of variety, but the rule has been rice, oats, chicken, fish and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables! Even the foods that we give them on the bike are rice based.
There’s a bit of insight into what the guys are eating here at the Tour.
Well, there you have it folks --
from the mouths of professional athletes. Wheat is no good.
Well, what about whole wheat? Yeah, that too. (I can't take the good without the bad, and this guy thinks red meat has an inflammatory effect too -- I don't know.
Update: See
comment by Levi on red meat being mildly anti-inflammatory.)
Here's a more important take-away: superstar athletes are still learning what's good for them and bad for them. They haven't figured it out yet. Even when it comes to the basics. WHO WOULD HAVE EVER THOUGHT THAT PASTA WOULD BE CHALLENGED AS A GOOD FUEL? Doesn't everybody knows that pasta is the ideal food before a long endurance challenge?
The conventional wisdom continues to crumble. A continuing series.
(Thanks to my grandmother, a late blooming celiac, for sending me this link.)
Comments
Yes, it's true that Gluten is
Yes, it's true that Gluten is bad for everyone.. Wheat especially.... However red meat is split .. It's good for some and good for others... Know what determines this?
John, come on, isn't it an
John, come on, isn't it an over-stretch to say that "the conventional wisdom continues to crumble" because one guy said "I believe that the high amounts of wheat products that are normally consumed by bike racers at the Tour have an inflammatory effect in the body"? And was it the lack of all that inflammation that made Garmin-Transitions not place in the top-10 teams overall? Really, the article seems like little more than an experiment in food habits limited to a particular group of people. Well short of a revolution in nutrition.
I totally dramatized it, for
I totally dramatized it, for sure!
If this were the only case, I'd agree, but it seems like every health product says "gluten free" these days. Gluten free is going beyond celiacs. See the gluten free wedding cake at Chelsea Clinton's wedding I posted about.
Take a look at the trend line for gluten free relative to vegan and vegetarian:
http://google.com/trends?q=gluten+free,+vegan,+vegetarian&ctab=0&geo=all...
Hope it's brown or wild rice
Hope it's brown or wild rice that they're eating. White rice and such spikes the blood sugar same as pasta. And if the riders still want pasta, there are some excellent brands based on brown rice. To offset the vasculitis-triggering effects of nightshade-family veggies (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers), eat a lot of asparagus, eggs (whole or yolks), onions, and garlic.
This is great news, hopefully
This is great news, hopefully this gets some publicity! Unfoturanaly they are still eating oats, which while it does not contain gluten(assuming it is not contaminated by wheat) it does contain a similar protein called avenin which causes the same response. I learned this the hard way when getting several questions wrong on a test while learning about coeliac disease
Mt. bike race/train. Ate
Mt. bike race/train. Ate copious amounts of pasta after every ride. Had horrible/scary heart rhythm irregularities/extreme fatigue. Dropped the pasta/all grain. Been eating paleo almost a year. No irregularities noticed yet, even with elevated heart rate during training. Hmmm.
If you go to
If you go to www.nutritiondata.com it gives inflammation rates of food items. It shows that red meats, depending on the cut and source, has mild anti-inflammatory tendencies, are inflammatory or mostly neutral (and no different than poultry or pork). On the other hand, a plate of pasta can be as much as 100 times more inflammatory than red meat!
Keep in mind, nutritiondatas
Keep in mind, nutritiondatas opinion on red meat is based on sick cows(grainfed) Nutritiondata also makes serious assumptions about inflammation
check out this blog article
check out this blog article about a Gluten-Free Meal Optimizing Performance. I believe all this information about gluten-free diets based on research and experience. Our immune system in our guts are so weakened today from a long list of problems like: increased c-sections, decreased breast-feeding, vaccines, nutrient depleted foods, etc. that we are having more and more problems digesting the new GMO wheat available today.