Diet

Novak Djokovic goes gluten-free, becomes best tennis player in the world

Novak Djokovic is the best tennis player in the world right now.  Perhaps the most dominant player in any sport, says the WSJ:

"It's no secret that Djokovic has had a breakout season, or that he has been, by any reasonable standard, the world's best athlete of 2011. On Sunday, he beat Rafael Nadal in the Rome Masters, his fourth-straight win over the Spaniard. It was his second win over Nadal on clay in two weeks, and again, amazingly, he did it without losing a set. The match ran Djokovic's 2011 record to 37-0 with seven titles."

Note: It's extremely hard to beat Rafael Nadal.  It's near impossible to beat him on clay.  Nadal on clay is like a bird in flight.  More on Djokovic's dominance:

"Of Djokovic's 37 wins, 13 are against Top 10 players, including four against Nadal and three against Federer, who in all his years of dominance never started a season in so grand a fashion. If Djokovic reaches the French Open final, he could have 43 consecutive victories—one more than John McEnroe's record 42 to start 1984 (that streak ended in the French Open final, after McEnroe won the first two sets against Ivan Lendl).

Djokovic's 2011 on-court stats border on the absurd: He has won 89% of his service games, 43% of his return games and half of his break points. In his four matches against Nadal, he has repeatedly gotten the better of the Spaniard in rallies lasting longer than eight shots. No one has done that to Nadal in his professional career."

That's just insane -- 7 of his 37 wins (18.9%) are against Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal.  So to what does Djokovic attribute his success?

"Last year, Djokovic's nutritionist discovered that Djokovic is allergic to the protein, which is found in common flours."

...

"Since last year, he's swearing off pasta, pizza, beer, French bread, Corn Flakes, pretzels, empanadas, Mallomars and Twizzlers—anything with gluten."

Of course, as the article points out, athletics can be extremely mental, dependent on confidence, and small changes (even placebos) can have large effects.  And if Djokovic had gone gluten-free and played worse, then I probably wouldn't have heard or posted about it.  But even so.

Go read the full article, if only to see the Journal's artistic depiction of Nadal and Federer dressed up as steaks.  

Health problems disappear when captive gorillas fed wild diet

Watch this video.  Then re-blog it, like it on facebook, and re-tweet it.  Tell your family and send it to your doctor.  Write a letter to your congressman.  Show it to your niece and nephew, and teach it in your classroom.  Let your dog sniff the computer while it's playing.  Meditate on it.  Put it on a thumb drive, duct tape it to a brick, and throw it through the window at the USDA.  Put it in a time capsule so future generations will know.  Convert it into binary and beam it into space.

And here's the article: Captive Gorillas Succumbing to Human Disease.  I'm just going to post it here without commentary, just my bolding.

Life for humans is much easier than for animals in the wild. On a day-to-day basis, we generally do not have to worry about being eaten or starving to death. Depending on the individual's job, some can get by just fine by sitting around all day. However, this lifestyle brings forth its own set of health issues such as diabetes and heart disease, illnesses rarely found in the wild. These "human" diseases have spread to gorillas that are raised in captivity.

The only species of gorilla kept at North American zoos is the Western Lowland Gorilla. The number one killer of males in captivity is heart disease, much like humans. After a 21 year old gorilla named Brooks died of heart failure at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in 2005, a group of researchers decided to examine how the gorilla’s lifestyle affect their health. The team was led by Elena Hoellein Less, a PhD candidate in biology at Case Western Reserve University.

The researchers believe that heart disease can be stopped by switching captive gorillas back to their natural diets in the wild. For decades, zoos have fed gorillas bucket loads of high vitamin, high sugar, and high starch foods to make sure their got all their nutrients. At the Cleveland zoo, they have started feeding food such as romaine lettuce, dandelion greens, endives, alfalfa, green beans, flax seeds, and even tree branches which they strip of bark and leaves. To top it off, they give the gorillas three Centrum Silver multivitamins inside half a banana.

Going back to this natural diet has changed gorilla behavior. Before, gorillas only ate during a quarter of their day because the food was so packed with nutrients. Now at Cleveland, they spend 50-60 percent of their day eating which is the same amount as in the wild. With all this extra eating, the gorillas have doubled their caloric intake, yet at the same time have dropped 65 pounds each. This brings their weight more in line with their wild relatives.

"We're beginning to understand we may have a lot of overweight gorillas," said Kristen Lukas, an adjunct assistant professor of biology at Case Western Reserve and chair of the Gorilla Species Survival Plan®. "And, we're just recognizing that surviving on a diet and being healthy on a diet are different. We've raised our standards and are asking, are they in the best condition to not only survive but to thrive?"

Less and her crew are continuing their studies of captive gorillas by measuring the fat on their backs to create a gorilla body mass index. This can be used to gauge healthy weight for gorillas much as it is used for humans. The next step, says Less, is to exercise gorillas at the zoo to get their muscles to a similar level as their wild relatives.

I may shut down the blog after this post because there's nothing left to say.

Thank you to Mark for the link.

Ultra-marathoner Scott Jurek pushing veganism

Ultra-marathoner and vegan Scott Jurek was recently profiled in the NYT.   For those who aren't familiar with Jurek, he's a crazy sick ultra-marathoner who dominates many of these 50 mile, 100 mile, 100+ mile races.  The piece is unique in that it ignores the ethical aspects of veganism and just talks about athletic performance.  Let's see what they have to say.

In college, his diet began to improve, and as he “saw how much disease is lifestyle related,” he began eating “real food, eating the way people have been eating for thousands of years.”

I'm all for real food, but claims to history in favor of real food is not an argument in favor of veganism.

“None of this is weird,” he said. “If you go back 300 or 400 years, meat was reserved for special occasions, and those people were working hard. 

Go back 300 or 400 years?  The 18th century is the benchmark of healthy eating?  To the extent people ate less meat back then it was because they were poor.

"Remember, almost every long-distance runner turns into a vegan while they’re racing, anyway — you can’t digest fat or protein very well.”

There are so many things wrong with that sentence I don't know where to start.

  • You can get fat or protein from plant sources, so that's just a non-sequitur.
  • Just because you're eating carbohydrates while you're running doesn't mean that you're a vegan.   It means you're momentarily a vegetarian, I suppose.
  • And even that assumes that you body isn't using it's own fat or protein stores.  That's kind of like eating an animal.
  • Also, most of these distance racers are eating heavily processed energy gels and bars -- not "real food", much less vegan food.

All it takes is one look at a long-distance runner's body to see that they have little muscle mass and they're all skin and bones.  Hence my choice of picture.

He said he needed 5,000 to 8,000 calories a day, “and I get that all from plant sources. It’s not hard, either. I like to eat, and I don’t have to worry about weight management. All I need is a high-carbohydrate diet with enough protein and fat.”

My emphasis.  If you're eating 8,000 calories a day, good luck getting it from fat and protein -- you'll be too full.  Interesting...to maximize caloric intake, eat a high-carbohydrate diet.  Wait, isn't that what we're told to do to minimize caloric intake too?  Which is it?

I'm not saying that Scott Jurek is eating the wrong way -- God, no.  He's a super-star athlete, his achievements are mind-blowing, and if he says a vegan diet helps him achieve that, then I'm not going to suggest otherwise.  By eating a high carbohydrate diet, he's training his body to use carbohydrate as fuel, which is probably essential for his type of long-distance exertions.

But should we eat like Michael Phelps, with his 12,000 calories a day of chocolate-chip pancakes, energy drinks, and pizza?  No.  And we shouldn't eat like Scott Jurek either.

   

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