Veggie Power

The secret of good nutrition may only be a plant away

Yeah, | know. You've heard “Eat your vegetables!" since you were a kid. We know there are ones you don't like, ranging from icky to downright disgust- It’s unfortunate that so few athletes treat their bodies like the fine examples of construction and workmanship that they are. How often have you heard how important it is to put premium fuel into cars? Would you put vegetable oil in your car? Then ing. Fair enough. So why am | going to spend time talking about Brussels why would you consume chips, soda and a white bread-bolognasprouts when we know you'd rather be opening a bag of potato chips? expect your body to function properly?

Poor nutrition will make lose focus in the classroom and affect your athletic performance.

You need to fuel your machine properly, and that means that success as an athlete. the quality of fuel needed for your body is a lot higher than the and-mayonnaise sandwich for lunch? How could you possibly your mornings sluggish, put you in a bad mood, cause you to quality of fuel you put into your car. Vegetables, especially the brightly- and dark-colored ones, are loaded with vitamins and minerals that power the whole machine called your body. Without sufÏcient vitamins and min- Vitamins and minerals are called “micronutrients,”

whereas erals, your body just won’t work and it cannot properly use any macronutrients are the fats, proteins and carbohydrates that proof the other foods you consume. vide calories for energy and tissue building. The micronutrients @ /\W1 Vhile 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables don’t sound like that much (that’s a maximum requirement of two vegetables per meal and three fruit snacks or desserts per day), that’s a whole lot more than the typical American eats. And think about your diet. If you are a bacon-and eggs-breakfast sort of person, a hamburger-with-fries-for-lunch sort of person, and a meat-andRita Romano's “Dining in Groundbaraking Narva!

Cuisine Thar Combines the potatoes-with-a-salad-for-dinner person, you are in big trouble.

(Yes, we know the government counts French fries and ketchup prepare vegetables. as vegetables, but who is that supposed to fool? Those items Techwigues of Macrobioric, Vegan, Allengy-Free,and are junk food—primatily sugar, pure and simple—and their nutritional content is about nil. Additionally, their high levels of unhealthy components like trans fats and sugar mean you need to eat additional servings of real vegetables to compensate for eating those junk veggies!)

If this describes your diet, you are at least four servings behind are absolutely essential for your body to be able to properly use just in meeting the minimum requirement. That means you are the macronutrients you consume. In addition to containing vitamins and minerals, vegetables are an excellent source of fiber. eating about what the standard American diet (called “SAD,” for Without sufÏcient fiber, nothing in your body is going to work for diet- and lifestyle-induced diabetes, even among teenagers, properly. good reason) provides, along with incurring large doses of risk and a hugely increased risk of cancers, in general.

And that just won't cut the mustard (or the broccoli, for that matter). It’s time Vegetables and fruits are essential players in the game to fight to get serious about vegetable consumption, and now! off the biggies in diseases that could ruin your life in the not-sodistant future. These include heart disease; strokes; eye ailments that can cause blindness, such as macular degeneration and cataracts; and many types of cancer. Fruits and vegetables simply are the most important components of diet when it comes to avoiding these illnesses and having a strong, active and healthy body in the future.

But for now, you want to win the game, kick butt at the meet and make a new personal best in the weightroom! That's definitely going to require some power veggies. Different sources have different recommendations for the number of servings of vegetables required each day for optimal health. These range from 5 (Tufts University) to 13 per day (the National Cancer Institute and various other universities and nutritionists), depending on one’s calorie intake. For example, if you are a linebacker and therefore going heavy on the calories, load up with 9-13 servings. Your high calorie intake means your body is using higher levels of nutrients in the first place.

At more than 2,000 calories per day, you need to be eating at least 9 servings.

If you are a gymnast or other weight-conscious athlete, such as a wrestler attempting to move into a lower weight class, you can hold consumption to the 5-servings-per-day level. But definitely don’t drop below that for optimum power and health.

Phyto What is It? In addition to their vitamin and mineral content, vegetables in general, and certain types of vegetables specifically, provide large amounts of what are called “phytochemicals.” This translates ~ into “plant chemicals” (leave it to the scientists to call plants Some of the most important antioxidants, in addition to vita- “phytos”). But phytochemicals are crucial to your health. mins E and C and alpha-lipoic acid, are beta-carotenes.

These ‘They are critical to fighting off many types of cancer, including are components of the family of carotenoids that are found in cancers of the mouth and throat, kidney, bladder, stomach, high levels in vegetables such as carrots and sweet potatoes. lung, ovary and colon. Vegetables that provide especially large ‘That's why you've heard that carrots are good for your eyes. amounts of helpful phytochemicals include broccoli, cabbage, Carotenoids do help protect the eyes from damage over time. But Brussels sprouts and the other “stinky” vegetables.

Find out how all vegetables provide some helpful antioxidants, and the key is to cook these in a way that you like, and eat them every week to eat plenty, to eat a wide variety of them and to eat them fresh.

(OK, maybe not the Brussels sprouts). In addition, tomatoes have a component called lycopene, which gives them their red color. Lycopene gives protection against prostate cancer (tell Dad) and possibly some types of nonmalignant uterine tumors (tell Mom).

Super Bs If you are a typical athlete, you're under loads of physical and mental stress. You are working to keep your grades up, possibly trying to get into the college of your choice and maybe win a scholarship, and you have the constant pressure of the field and Greatly underestimated in the standard American approach to weightroom. You know it’s tough. That’s where the B vitamins food is the importance of a food component that provides no come in. nutrition whatsoever. It has no calories, and it contributes no vitamins, minerals, fats or protein. And yet, you just gotta have B vitamins help the body cope with mental and physical stress it. That component is fiber.

There are a couple of types of fiber without losing its energy or becoming depleted. In addition, and each is important. you may have noticed how you want to eat more sugar when you're stressed—you know that desperate urge for a Twinkie! First there is water-soluble fiber, such as the squishy type in oats.

Well, B’s help with that too, and they help your body deal with ‘This type has been shown to have a beneficial effect on cholessugar to help protect your health. They also help your body build terol levels and can absorb other potentially harmful substances, proteins, the basic structure of everything from muscles to hair.

‘Then there is insoluble fiber. This is the stuff your body can do Don’t expect to build muscles without eating enough vegetables nothing with from a digestion standpoint. Absolutely nothing. with the B vitamins. For high levels of B’s eat your veggies, par- It's like trying to digest plastic or paper. It’s just filler or roughticularly spinach, broccoli and greens. age. But it is a big deal.

Vegetables without Nutrients Insoluble fiber sweeps your food along in the lower digestive OK. So let’s say you are eating your 5 to 13 servings of tract, scrubs the walls clean, reduces pressure in the intestinal vegetables and fruit per day and getting good variety, Are you tract, thereby preventing damage, and carries out harmful doing everything you need to protect your health, energy and substances. This is the stuff that keeps the whole system movperformance? Maybe not. That's because you need to consider ing along smoothly and makes its absence painfully clear when where your vegetables came from and how they were prepared. things don’t move along as they should!

Be sure to get plenty In a shocking evaluation of the US Department of Agriculture’s of high-fiber vegetables, along with fruits. These include celery food tables, nutritionist Alex Jack noticed that the nutritional (didn't you wonder what those strings in celery that you can’t content of common vegetables had plummeted over the last even chew are for?), broccoli, beans and many others. You really couple of decades. In looking at the table from 1999, he noticed can’t go wrong in eating enough vegetables to get the fiber that a huge decrease in the levels of vitamins and minerals from a your body needs—and French fries won’t do it! comparable table from 1975.

For example, the newest table indicated a 50 percent decrease Additionally, vegetables provide high levels of important vitamins in the amount of calcium in broccoli, a 40 percent decrease and minerals that act as antioxidants in the body. These work to in the amount of vitamin C in cauliflower and an 88 percent absorb the dangerous byproducts of natural body processes, such decrease in the iron content of watercress (the English love this as the metabolic process and digestion, as well as to protect your stuff; Americans, not so much).

Alex Jack asked Dan Glickman, body against the damage caused by sunlight, pollution, smokthe Secretary of Agriculture at the time, what could account for ing, stress and infections. the decreases, but Glickman never responded. It is likely that the decreases are the result of changing agricultural methods and twice as many fruits and vegetables for us to get our daily from the change from natural, balanced fertilizers in favor of requirement of vitamin A than was previously thought. And simpler, chemical ones. clearly, the problem is not limited to vitamin A. Top off that problem with the tendency for people to eat processed vegetaThe decreases in the nutritional levels get even worse.

A 1963 bles—either canned or frozen—and you can see that Americans are in a nutritional crisis. While frozen vegetables tend to have USDA shows that since that time, the level of vitamin C in a typical sweet pepper plummeted from 128 mg to normal levels of nutrients—down to about 10 percent less 89 mg! A typical apple now has only 53 mg of vitamin A rather fresh, canned vegetables suffer terribly from nutrient loss. And than 90 mg. Collards now have 3,800 IU’s of vitamin A comeven premature picking timetables and transportation methods pared with the 6,500 units they once had.

Their potassium conare further depleting vegetables and fruits of their vital nutrition tent fell from 400 mg down to 160 mg, And levels of magnesium, making them not at all the same foods that our grandparents the heart-protecting mineral, dropped from 57 mg to a mere 9 ale. in collards! This trend has occurred with some fruits as well. For example, pineapple now has lost most of its calcium—from 17 So, what to do? Start off by eating as many mg per 100 grams down to just 7 mgs. And I don’t even want to cooked vegetables as possible. Add fresh fruit.

And top them off know what has happened to the nutritional content of our now with a pharmaceutical-grade nutritional aid such as Lifepak, typically hydroponically grown tasteless tomatoes! taken with meals, to help close the gap. Also note that organic vegetables have a vastly higher nutritional content. Although In response to this phenomenon, the National Academy of they cost a lot more, you will be getting more bang for your Sciences issued an alert to the public stating that it now takes buck. Whatever you do, just “Eat your vegetables!” EB”

Not only does G3 have 60 times the vitamin C found in oranges and 10 times the vitamin A of carrots, it's packed with other antioxidants that help your body recover from hard workouts. Just two swigs a day (about 3 ounces) of this delicious fruit drink will give you a nutritional edge to help you achieve peak performance. Vitamin C in Cili Fruit (mg/100g wet wt.)

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From BFS Magazine — July/August 2005. Part of the BFS Magazine Archive (1980–2014).