LOW CARB
'v' HIGH CARB
The right choices at the dinner table make a winning difference in both strength and endurance for top athletes, and the same nutritional rules are true for every other human being. To be our best, we all must eat our best.
In nature there is an ideal diet for each kind of animal: cats devour meat, koala bears eat eucalyptus leaves, and panda bears thrive on bamboo shoots. People also have an ideal diet to look and feel their best and function optimally. However, in our Internet-connected world, correct nutritional information can be hard to recognize with so many conflicting recommendations. Headlines show highly visible athletes
choosing polar ends of nutrition: high-carbohydrate (grains, legumes, and potatoes) vs. low-carbohydrate (meat, cheese, and eggs) for winning their events.
Marc Gasol, a 30-year-old professional basketball star for the Memphis Grizzlies, after sitting on the bench for two months, made a major change to a high-carbohydrate, plant-food-based diet. He lost 20 pounds and improved his score at the hoop.
Diametrically opposed and in the low-carb boat is Sami Inkinen, a triathlon competitor. His most recent effort to promote the eating
of animals and vegetable oil was to row a specially designed water craft in an event called the “Fat Chance Row” 2,400 miles from San Francisco to Honolulu in a record-breaking time. A valuable outcome of his journey was to reinforce the message to cut simple sugars and highly refined flours; but on the damaging side, eating almost exclusively “food poisons” was a disservice to the public.
A Brief History of Carbohydrate Performance
All large populations of trim, healthy, athletic-competing, war-fighting people throughout verifiable human history have obtained the bulk of their calories from high-carbohydrate foods (starches). Examples of thriving populations include the Japanese, Chinese, and other Asians, who
eat sweet
potatoes,
buckwheat,
and/or rice;
Incas in
South
America who
eat potatoes;
Mayans and
Aztecs in
Central
America who
eat potatoes;