Vegan and Vegetarian Athletes
You've no doubt heard all the stereotypes before. "Vegetarians are 98-pound weaklings." "Athletes need to eat meat in order to maintain their strength." "The term 'vegetarian athlete' is an oxymoron." "Vegetarians are effeminate." And so on. These claims are just mindless prejudices at best, and outright lies at worst. Fact is, by the time you've finished reading this page, you might realize that it's the meat-eating athletes who put themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to athletic competition!
Let me tell you of at least four noteworthy athletes who are completely vegan: ultramarathoner Scott Jurek; endurance racer (and good friend) Paul Chetirkin; cage fighter Mac Danzig; and Olympic track champion Carl Lewis, who famously won nine gold medals and one silver in Olympic competition in the '80s and '90s, and is totally vegan.
If you're still not convinced, scroll down to the final section of this page, The Vegetarian Athletes. Excerpted from John Robbins' book Diet for a New America, this section recounts the many world records and accomplishments of numerous athletes who are at least vegetarian if not vegan.
For information on being a vegan bodybuilder, visit Vegan Muscle Power on the Web. Just click on this link or on the image at right showing VMP founder Kenneth "Gogen" Williams.
Having compassion for animals (and for your fellow humans) doesn't mean that you can't kick MAJOR ass!
Scott Jurek: Ultramarathoner, Vegan
The following article originally appeared in the New York Times online, May 12, 2010.
Ultramarathoner Jurek Takes Diet to the Extreme
By Mark Bittman
I went running with Scott Jurek on a clear, chilly morning last month, an easy four-mile loop in Central Park. He ran another few miles with 50 or so adoring fans, then another few by himself, for a total of about 15. After that he showered and came to my house to cook lunch before going for a late-afternoon jog of another 10 miles or so.
That's an easy day for Jurek, 36, an accomplished ultramarathoner. But one might say he has been in a slump: he has not won a major race since the 2008 Spartathlon. On the other hand, he set a personal record there, it was his third consecutive victory on the 153-mile course between Athens and Sparta, and he holds the fifth-, sixth- and eighth-fastest times in race history.
If last year was a wash, this year he is fit and psyched for the 24-Hour Run world championship in Brive-la-Gaillarde, France, on Thursday and Friday. It is a grueling race to determine how many miles runners can complete on a 1.4-kilometer road loop (about nine-tenths of a mile) in a 24-hour period.
Jurek says he can break the American record, 162 miles, held by Mark Godale. (The world record, 178 miles, and just about every ultramarathoning record from 100 to 1,000 miles, and from 24 hours to 10 days, are, Jurek said, "unassailably" held by Yiannis Kouros of Greece, who no longer competes.)
To win Brive, Jurek said, he must: "Get on it, crank around it, and get it done. It's all in a day's work."
It's a long day, and one that raises a particular aspect of Jurek's training that makes him an especially interesting athlete: he is a vegan, consuming no animal products.
There are other professional athletes who do not eat meat: Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder, a vegetarian, may be the best known, and the hockey player Georges Laraque is also a vegan. But it is difficult for some to comprehend how this lifestyle is compatible with training weeks of 140 miles and more, "easy" runs of 40 miles and interval training that includes uphill three-mile repeats, all culminating in races that are often 100 miles or more, sometimes through deserts or frozen wastelands or up and down mountains.
Jurek certainly looks healthy enough. He is tall, dwarfing most competitive marathoners, not rail thin, with a quick smile and boundless energy. A few hours after our morning run, he showed up at my house and began pulling things out of the refrigerator and pantry with abandon: vegetables, greens, herbs, miso, tofu, olives, shallots, lemons, nut butter and more.
He displayed knife skills and good culinary judgment, preparing a meal for me and his girlfriend, Jenny Uehisa, a designer for Patagonia (he is sponsored by Brooks Sports). We ate a Greek salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, loads of olives and seaweed; a stir-fry of vegetables with tofu and a miso and cashew sauce; and a mound of quinoa.
Where did he learn to cook this way? And more to the point, how does he survive? After all, I said to him, none of my running buddies, a group of nonelite but defiantly dedicated marathoners who train in Central Park, maintain as rigorous a schedule as his, and many claim to have trouble consuming enough calories even while being omnivorous.
"The whole issue," he said, "is exactly that: getting enough calories. The first thing to worry about isn't so much what you eat, but how much you eat. You have to take the time to sit at the table and make sure your calorie count is high enough. And when you're a vegan, to increase your calories as you increase training you need more food. This isn't an elimination diet but an inclusion diet."
Jurek grew up in Proctor, Minn., eating cookie dough, canned vegetables and his share of fast food. When his mother, Lynn, developed multiple sclerosis (she died this spring), he and his siblings began cooking, but the food was, he said, "very Midwest—meat and potatoes." 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."
He made the transition to less meat and more fish, then eventually knocked out dairy and other animal products entirely.
"It's really a mental barrier," he said, and he obviously has experience overcoming those. 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."
He said he spent a great deal of time shopping, preparing and cooking food—and chewing. He is among the slowest and most deliberate eaters I know, and there is something about his determination at the table that is reminiscent of his determination on the road: he just doesn't stop.
He focuses on three main meals. Breakfast is key: it might be a 1,000-calorie smoothie, with oil, almonds, bananas, blueberries, salt, vanilla, dried coconut, a few dates and maybe brown rice protein powder. Unless he is doing a long run, which for him is seven hours, or about 50 miles, he eats after his first workout. Lunch and dinner are huge salads, whole grains, potatoes and sweet potatoes, and usually beans of some sort or a tempeh-tofu combination.
"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. Remember, almost every long-distance runner turns into a vegan while they're racing, anyway—you can't digest fat or protein very well."
Jurek said he hated running when he was in high school, enduring it only to stay in shape for skiing. But when he was 20, a friend persuaded him to try a marathon. He finished in less than three hours, good for second place and astonishing for a novice. By 1999, he ran his first Western States 100. Formally called the Western States Endurance Run, this is an up-and-down course in the Sierra Nevada with a cutoff time of 30 hours. He set the course record in 2004, 15 hours 36 minutes; won the race seven consecutive times; and in 2005, two weeks after finishing, ran and won the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile race that begins in Death Valley and ends halfway up Mount Whitney.
Looking back, he wondered, "Where was my mind?"
Which brings us to an obvious question: What is Scott Jurek trying to prove? Of the few thousand Americans who consider themselves ultramarathoners, most would be happy just qualifying for Western States, and most of those would be ecstatic to finish before the cutoff.
Jurek, having proved himself in dozens of off-road races, is focused on the 24-hour record and looking forward to the flat race, "an environment where it's just me and the clock and the road under my feet."
After that, he would like to run—and win—the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, an ultramarathon in the Alps at a distance of just over 100 miles; the record is a little more than 20 hours. His best finish was 18th, and he dropped out twice, so it's a serious challenge.
"I haven't had a great race there," he said. "But though I want to win, the running is a vehicle for self-discovery. I've been racing for 15 years, but I feel like I'm still at my peak."
Evidently, it isn't his diet that's slowing him down.
Paul Chetirkin: Extreme Sportsman, Endurance Racer, Vegan
This e-mail is from one of the toughest and most talented athletes on this planet, Paul Chetirkin. He is 100 percent vegan and competes several times a year in EXTREME SPORTS competitions, including the Eco-Challenge, the world's most intense race, bar none.
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Chetirkin [pchetirkin@hotmail.com ]
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 6:57 PM
Concerning a vegan diet for athletes, first I really have to tell everyone that I no longer even pay attention to my vegan food as it is more of a way of life now because I have been doing this for 15 years. However, not to be cavalier about it, it is very important that people pay attention to what they are eating at least when you are first starting out.
If you are a student, one thing that will most affect your choices is the availability of veg food at the school dining hall. If there is an absence of such food choices, talk to the dining hall director about bringing in veg food. Since a lot of schools are catching on with healthy eating, this shouldn't be too difficult.
The first thing I must really stress for a complete diet is VARIETY. Gary will back me up on this. In fact, when Gary recently visited, we went shopping and he did the rainbow routine at the produce section. He got something red (strawberries), blue (blueberries), green (grapes), orange (cantaloupe), yellow (bananas), etc.
Basically, I keep a variety of foods going into my body to get the greatest cumulative effect. In my case, I usually try to find something different. I like to shop at Asian groceries because you can bet they have things in there that are good for you and they are usually a hell of a lot cheaper than major retailers. I eat a ton of dark leafy greens or just dark green veggies— steamed, raw, in vegan pot-pie, whatever. This is the anchor to my diet. It's good and useful protein minus the cholesterol and other animal derived chemistry which strips your body of other precious elements and nutrients (calcium being one—and important for you as you work on your strength). So, eat the greens for the best calcium along with soy, tofu or sesame seeds which are abundant in calcium. DO NOT RELY on dairy for calcium. Dairy is the worst source of calcium as the protein found in cow milk is too acidic for our bodies to digest.
And the acidic protein forces our kidneys to excrete calcium not only from the cow milk but from our bones as well. Good calcium intake is key to your bone recovery time as much as protein is to muscle after heavy workouts. Trust me, when my team does 24-hour non-stop training sessions for adventure racing (trekking over 30 miles, biking 100 miles, and kayaking 20 miles), we always recover with lightning speed because veganism is the best diet for the human body.
The protein concern is a myth. It's based on modeling done by scientists who were hired by the meat and dairy industry. Gary is right—you can get mad protein from tofu, beans and lentils, and even veggies. Always remember this— what isn't a fat or a carb, is a protein. So eat veggies because they are mostly carbs and protein. But they don't slow you down like cholesterol-laden animal protein.
I approach this all from a very big-picture perspective. One other thing to think about concerning your body and your workout regimen is not just what you put into it—i.e., how much protein, etc.—but what it does to you once you have it. The thing about meat is, it is dead, and I am not being dramatic here. Dead food—meat—is highly acidic because decomposition occurs right away. Microbes began to break down the matter and it becomes concentrated with acids. When you put gobs of acidic foods into your body, you are telling your system that there is decomposition going on here which is the wrong signal to give muscles that are really being tested during training.
Now take the opposite—living foods are alkaline—high energy yield and output, healing effects, etc. Alkaline foods are more regenerative and have a more positive impact on your system during and after strenuous activity. Living foods like leafy green spinach salad—with a big block of tofu that you marinated in soy sauce and sesame oil with all the other veggies—is much more useful to you than a big hunk of steak. The presence of alkaline foods in your body will give you more endurance while working out, restore sore muscles faster, and also keep you young longer, meaning your level of performance will peak faster and stay there longer. I am 33 now and the strongest, fastest, with the most endurance I ever had. And I also played rugby for 10 years. Veganism has really helped to actually reverse a lot of the damage I did to my body and bones while I played.
So key is variety! If it's too difficult to buy fresh produce then even canned veggies are okay. I eat a ton of canned beans, garbanzos, black beans, kidney beans, etc. Throw those on the salad too.
Also, fresh living (alkaline) foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes and grains—as opposed to dead foods which are heavy and processed (acid) like meat, cheese, lots of sugar, etc.—are key to sustained athletic performance. I really think it's critical for people to experiment and see what foods work best based on your tastes and other factors such as availability, funds, etc.
I will give you an example of my diet though. I get up and run about 6-8 miles on the beach, followed with lifting (for maintenance only) and lots of cals/ stretch work. Most of what I do I use my own body weight like tons of pushups, pull-ups, crunches, etc.
I drink a soy protein shake right after comprised of 8 ounces of apple juice, 2 scoops of Trader Joe's soy protein powder (its about 25 grams protein), cinnamon, and a little water. I usually have a banana with that, too. Then a bowl of grape nuts with raisins and cranberry juice or soy milk. I walk to work (just a couple of miles) and walk home for lunch and that's when I have that beastie salad. Spinach leaves, romaine lettuce, kidney beans, marinated tofu, artichoke hearts, onions, Bacos (hell yeah they're vegan), broccoli, peas, corn. Whatever isn't tied down, I throw it in.
In the evening, I usually hop on my versaclimber for a half hour to keep the metabolism up and for dinner I usually have something meaty. I am a meat and potatoes kind of guy. So I kill those Riblets on a big hoagie roll. The Riblets have tons of protein and it tastes like the real thing. Plus, I snack all day on fruit, especially dried fruit like nuts (trail mix).
There it is. No big secret. Keep it varied and there is no need to worry, I don't take vitamins because I don't need to. They are in all the fruit and veggies.
When I was in college, starting out as a vegan, I didn't always have time or money to really give it my full attention. And for that I say Taco Bell. Yes, I know fast food usually sucks, but there's not a hell of a lot you can do to demonize a bean burrito. It's complete protein, fast and cheap. And I lived off those bad-boys for about a year and a half.
But do yourself a favor and get into the kitchen and get crazy. Make some rice, some curry sauce (get some coconut milk and curry powder or paste), throw some tofu, onions, potatoes, into it and you will not only have yourself a healthy meal, but it will be damn tasty. If there is anything specific you want to discuss, please feel free to ask away. As Gary mentioned, I do adventure racing. I do it to show the world that you can take part in the most extreme sporting events and more than that, and that you can kick ass as a vegan, not just survive.
Mac Danzig: Cage Fighter, Mixed-Martial Artist, Vegan
With a name like Mac, the average person may snicker and think fast-food burgers are a part of Mac Danzig's meal plan. But Pride FC veteran, former 155 pound King of the Cage and Gladiator Challenge champion, Mac Danzig, has broken the mold dietary-wise by becoming a successful vegan mixed martial artist. While the visage of a pacifist hippy-like individual may appear among minds of the masses at the mention of the term "vegan", the 27 year old Danzig has carved his own path and along the way shattered stereotypical images. The lightweight fighter's success evidences a fighter can be successful without the consumption of animal products.
Despite his success as a vegan competitor in MMA, the concept that meat was pivotal to a fighter's performance was also an ideology that Danzig subscribed to early in his career. "I use to think that I needed chicken and fish as a source of protein in order to train properly", recalls Danzig, a 6 year veteran of the sport. "I subscribed to that theory for a while and then when I finally decided to cut everything out and I was doing it right, it felt really good and I didn't lose any strength at all. I feel like I recover quicker so it's been good." Read more...
Carl Lewis On Being Vegan
The following is an excerpt from Carl Lewis' introduction to Very Vegetarian, by Jannequin Bennett:
Can a world-class athlete get enough protein from a vegetarian diet to compete? I've found that a person does not need protein from meat to be a successful athlete. In fact, my best year of track competition was the first year I ate a vegan diet. Moreover, by continuing to eat a vegan diet, my weight is under control, I like the way I look. (I know that sounds vain, but all of us want to like the way we look.) I enjoy eating more, and I feel great. Here's my story.
When I grew up in New Jersey, I always enjoyed eating vegetables and was influenced by my mother, who believed in the importance of a healthy diet even though we ate meat regularly because my father wanted it. At the University of Houston I ate meat and tried to control my weight the wrong way—by skipping meals. Frequently I would skip breakfast, eat a light lunch, and then have my fill at dinner—just before I went to bed. Not only is skipping meals the wrong way to diet, but the way I did it is the worst way because your body needs four hours to digest its food before you go to sleep. Read more...
The Vegetarian Athletes
The following is excerpted from John Robbins, Diet for a New America (Tiburon, CA: H. J. Kramer Inc., 1987), pp. 156-163:
Numerous studies, published in the most reputable scientific and medical journals, have compared the strength and stamina of people eating different diet-styles. According to these studies, all of them rigorous, the common prejudice that meat gives strength and endurance, though plastered on thousands of billboards, and drummed into us since childhood, has absolutely no foundation in fact.
THE LAB RESULTS SPEAK
At Yale, Professor Irving Fisher designed a series of tests to compare the stamina and strength of meat-eaters against that of vegetarians. He selected men from three groups: meat-eating athletes, vegetarian athletes, and vegetarian sedentary subjects. Fisher reported the results of his study in the Yale Medical Journal. His findings do not seem to lend a great deal of credibility to the popular prejudices that hold meat to be a builder of strength.
"Of the three groups compared, the...flesh-eaters showed far less endurance than the abstainers (vegetarians), even when the latter were leading a sedentary life."26
Overall, the average score of the vegetarians was over double the average score of meat-eaters, even though half of the vegetarians were sedentary people, while all of the meat-eaters tested were athletes. After analyzing all the factors that might have been involved in the results, Fisher concluded that:
"...the difference in endurance between the flesh-eaters and the abstainers (was due) entirely to the difference in their diet...There is strong evidence that a...non-flesh...diet is conducive to endurance."27
A comparable study was done by Dr. J. Ioteyko of the Academie de Medicine of Paris.28 Dr. Ioteyko compared the endurance of vegetarians and meat-eaters from all walks of life in a variety of tests. The vegetarians averaged two to three times more stamina than the meat-eaters. Even more remarkably, they took only one-fifth the time to recover from exhaustion compared to their meat-eating rivals.
In 1968, a Danish team of researchers tested a group of men on a variety of diets, using a stationary bicycle to measure their strength and endurance. The men were fed a mixed diet of meat and vegetables for a period of time, and then tested on the bicycle. The average time they could pedal before muscle failure was 114 minutes. These same men at a later date were fed a diet high in meat, milk and eggs for a similar period and then re-tested on the bicycles. On the high meat diet, their pedaling time before muscle failure dropped dramatically—to an average of only 57 minutes. Later, these same men were switched to a strictly vegetarian diet, composed of grains, vegetables and fruits, and then tested on the bicycles. The lack of animal products didn't seem to hurt their performance—they pedaled an average of 167 minutes.29
Wherever and whenever tests of this nature have been done, the results have been similar. This does not lend a lot of support to the supposed association of meat with strength and stamina.
Doctors in Belgium systematically compared the number of times vegetarians and meat-eaters could squeeze a grip-meter. The vegetarians won handily with an average of 69, whist the meat-eaters averaged only 38. As in all other studies which have measured muscle recovery time, here, too, the vegetarians bounced back from fatigue far more rapidly than did the meat-eaters.30
I know of many other studies in the medical literature which report similar findings. But I know of not a single one that has arrived at different results. As a result, I confess, it has gotten rather difficult for me to listen seriously to the meat industry proudly proclaiming "meat gives strength" in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
WORLD RECORDS
On the athletic field, as in the laboratory, the endurance and accomplishments of vegetarians makes me question whether we need animal products for fitness. The achievements of vegetarian athletes are particularly noteworthy considering the relatively small percentage of vegetarian entrants. Athletes after all, are not immune from the cultural conditioning that meat alone gives the required strength and stamina. Yet some have adopted vegetarian diets and the results invite scrutiny.
Dave Scott, of Davis, California is a scholar-athlete who is well acquainted with the scientific literature on diet and health. He is also universally recognized as the greatest triathlete in the world. He has won Hawaii's legendary Ironman Triathlon a record four times [N.B.: six times as of 2007], including three years in a row, while no one else has ever won it more than once. In three consecutive years, Dave has broken his own world's record for the event, which consists, in succession, of a 2.4 mile ocean swim, a 112 mile cycle, and then a 26.2 mile run. Dave's college major was exercise physiology, and he says he keeps up on the latest developments in the field by reading "an incredible amount" of books and journals. He calls the idea that people, and especially athletes, need animal protein a "ridiculous fallacy." There are many people who consider Dave Scott the fittest man who ever lived. Dave Scott is a vegetarian.
I don't know how you might determine the world's fittest man. But if it isn't Dave Scott it might well be Sixto Linares. This remarkable fellow tells of the time:
"...when I became a vegetarian in high school, my parents were very very upset that I wouldn't eat meat...After fourteen years, they are finally accepting that it's good for me. They know it's not going to kill me."
During the fourteen years that Sixto's parents begrudgingly came to accept that his diet wasn't killing him, they watched their son set the world's record for the longest single day triathlon, and display his astounding endurance, speed and strength in benefits for the American Heart Association, United Way, the Special Children's Charity, the Leukemia Society of America, and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. So deeply ingrained, however, is the prejudice against vegetarianism that even as their son was showing himself possibly to be the fittest human being alive, his parents only reluctantly came to accept his diet. Sixto says he experimented for awhile with a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet (no meat, but some dairy products and eggs), but now eats no eggs or dairy products and feels better for it.
It doesn't seem to be weakening him too much. In June, 1985, at a benefit for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Sixto broke the world record for the one day triathlon by swimming 4.8 miles, cycling 185 miles, and then running 52.4 miles.
Robert Sweetgall, of Newark, Delaware, is another fellow who doesn't just sit around all day. He is world's premier ultra-distance walker. In the last three years, Robert has walked a distance greater than the 24,900 mile equatorial circumference of the earth. He says he is a:
"...vegetarian for moral reasons; there's enough food on earth for us not to have to kill animals to eat."
Though not chosen for its health value alone, Sweetgall's vegetarian diet doesn't seem to put him at too much of a disadvantage. After walking a 10,600 mile perimeter around the United States, he set out on a loop that would take him, via about 20 million footsteps, through parts of all 50 states within a year.
Then there is Edwin Moses. No man in sports history has ever dominated an event as Edwin Moses has dominated the 400 meter hurdles. The Olympic Gold Medalist went eight years without losing a race, and when Sports Illustrated gave him their 1984 "Sportsman of the Year" award, the magazine said:
"No athlete in any sport is so respected by his peers as Moses is in track and field."
Edwin Moses is a vegetarian.
Paavo Nurmi, the "Flying Finn," set twenty world records in distance running, and won nine Olympic medals. He was a vegetarian.
Bill Pickering of Great Britain set the world record for swimming the English channel, but that performance of his pales beside the fact that at the age of 48 he set a new world record for swimming the Bristol Channel. Bill Pickering is a vegetarian.
Murray Rose was only 17 when he won three gold medals in the 1956 Olympic games in Melbourne, Australia. Four years later, at the 1960 Olympiad, he became the first man in history to retain his 400 meter freestyle title, and later he broke both his 400 meter and 1500 meter freestyle world records. Considered by many to be the greatest swimmer of all time, Rose has been a vegetarian since he was two.
You might not expect to find a vegetarian in world championship body-building competitions. But Andreas Cahling, the Swedish body builder who won the 1980 Mr. International title, is a vegetarian, and has been for over ten years of highest level international competition. One magazine reported that Cahling's:
"...showings at the 'Mr. Universe' competitions, and at the professional body-building world championships, give insiders the feeling he may be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger."
Another fellow who is not exactly a weakling is Stan Price. He holds the world record for the bench press in his weight class. Stan Price is a vegetarian. Roy Hilligan is another gentlemen in whose face you probably wouldn't want to kick sand. Among his many titles is the coveted "Mr. America" crown. Roy Hilligan is a vegetarian.
Pierreo Verot holds the world's record for downhill endurance skiing. He is a vegetarian.
Estelle Gray and Cheryl Marek hold the world's record for cross-country tandem cycling. They are complete vegetarians, not even consuming eggs or dairy products.
The world's record for distance butterfly stroke swimming is held jointly by James and Jonathan deDonato. They are both vegetarians.
If you wanted to be an evangelist for the "meat gives strength" cult, and were looking for a 97-pound vegetarian weakling to pick on, you'd probably be better off staying away from Ridgely Abele. He recently won the United States Karate Association World Championship, taking both the Master Division Title for fifth degree black belt, and the overall Grand Championship. Abele, who has won eight national championships, is a complete vegetarian, who eats no meat, eggs, or dairy products.
The list goes on and on. Toronto, Canada, is the home of a national fitness institute that tests all the top athletes in that country. For a number of years tennis pro Peter Burwash consistently ranked between 50th and 60th. Then as an experiment, he switched to a vegetarian diet, though he thought at the time that vegetarians were emaciated, unhealthy creatures. Now, however, he knows better. One year after making the switch, Peter Burwash was tested at the institute and found to have the highest fitness index of any athlete in any sport in the entire country of Canada.
Another man you might have a hard time convincing that a meat diet-style yields superior physical performance is Marine Captain Alan Jones of Quantico, Virginia. I would never have believed that one could be a vegetarian Marine, but Jones is managing to do it, and his health doesn't seem to be suffering too much for his efforts.
Although crippled by polio when he was five years old, Jones is another candidate for world's fittest man and has amassed a record of physical accomplishments unmatched by any human being that ever lived. Not only does he hold the world record for continuous situps (17,003), but in one particular 15-month period he accomplished possibly the most remarkably array of physical achievements ever attained by a human being:
September, 1974—Lifted a 75-pound barbell over his head 1,600 times in 19 hours
February, 1975—Made 3,802 basketball free throws in 12 hours, including 96 out of 100
June, 1975—Swam 500 miles in 11 days through the Snake and Columbia Rivers, from Lewiston, Idaho to the Pacific Ocean
September, 1975—Skipped rope 43,000 times in five hours
October, 1975—Skipped rope 100,00 times in 23 hours
November, 1975—Swam over 68 miles in the University of Oregon swimming pool, without a sleeping break
December, 1975—Swam one-half mile in 32°F (0°C) water, without a wet suit, in the Missouri River near Sioux City, Iowa
January, 1976—Performed 51,000 situps in 76 hours
Meanwhile, across the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese are every bit as serious and fanatic about baseball as are Americans. So, in October 1981, when Tatsuro Hirooka took over as manager of a professional team who had finished in last place the previous season, he knew some changes had to be made. But the changes he made were not the ones most of us would expect. He told the players on the Siebu Lions that meat and other animal foods increase athletes' susceptibility to injury, and decrease their ability to perform. Therefore, said the new manager, like it or not, they were all going on a vegetarian diet.
The Lions took quite a ribbing during the 1982 season. One rival manager sneered they were "only eating weeds," and made some rather derogatory remarks about their masculinity. But the sneerer had to eat his words when the Lions beat his team for the Pacific League Championship, and then went on to defeat the Chunichi Dragons in the equivalent of our World Series. Lest anyone think this was a fluke, the vegetarian Lions came back the next year, and once again trounced the opposition, winning again both the League and National Championship.
Please note that I have not provided this listing of athletic accomplishments of some vegetarians because I think this in itself proves the vegetarian diet superior. It doesn't. It proves only that for these given individuals, with their specific biochemical individualities, a vegetarian diet worked superbly at a particular time.
But when we couple the experiences of Dave Scott, Edwin Moses, Murray Rose, Alan Jones and all the rest, with the data from systematic laboratory research published in reputable scientific journals, then, perhaps, we might have serious grounds to doubt the widely held prejudice that assumes greater weakness as an inevitable consequence of a vegetarian diet.
______________________________
26Fisher, Irving, "The Influence of Flesh Eating on Endurance," Yale Medical Journal, 13(5):205-221, 1907
27Ibid.
28Ioteyko, J., et al, Enquete scientifique sur les vegetariens de Bruxelles, Henri Lamertin, Brussels, p. 50
29Astrand, Per-Olaf, Nutrition Today 3:no.2, 9-11, 1968
30Schouteden, A., Ann de Soc. Des Sciences Med. et Nat. de Bruxelles (Belgium) I