I was reading TriAthlete magazine last night and came across an article regarding the protein supplement bodybuilde–see www.bodyhealth.com. Has anyone used this stuff? It seems incredibly expensive ($55/bottle). I’m a vegetarian and a reasonably serious athlete so getting protein is important to me. The website claims that Peter Reid and Paula Newbie-Frasier are both advocates of their product. Any thoughts?
why waste your money? ifyou are serious enough to buy that stuff than you should be a serious enough athlete to mantain a balanced diet and eat meat, or atleast eggs and tuna.
reklar-
If I am not mistaken, the author of the article has a vested interest in the success of the product that he was writing about. Maybe others could confirm/reject this?
There are many reasons a person can be a vegetarian, not just sports. I have many friends who are vegetarian on religious and ethical grounds. I also know people who simply don’t like meat.
Lets dispense with the myth now. Vegetarians don’t eat tuna, or poultry.
You’re probably better off (and cheaper) to get your protein from real food sources (legumes, soya products, etc). Just be sure to combine protein sources so that you get all essential amino acids in your diet, many vegetarians do not.
Also a discussion on this forum
Haha, i don’t think you can live as a vegetarian in todays society on a religous or ethical basis and not be a hypocrit. If you don’t like meat, eggs, or fish, then that’s another issue, but i’m sure protien supplements taste wonderful, and all the processing (many steps of which aren’t exactly kosher) that goes into them makes them great alternatives for the healthy, and ethically minded.
You can buy a lot of veggies for $55.
I don’t know anything about them other than what I read in the article and on their website, but that’s enough to motivate me to speak poorly of them any chance I get.
The article: Most blatant violation of journalistic integrity that I’ve encountered in some time. Their CEO masqueraded as a contributing writer, and his article was nothing other than a shameless plug for his product. In fact, an ad for the product appeared directly below the article, and both contained the exact same graph showing the supposed efficacy of the product. I was disgusted that the magazine would stoop this low. I don’t mind folks with a vested interest in a product touting it in a magazine, but such touting should be proclaimed as such and put in context of competing products or nutritional studies.
The product: Advises 10 pills before and 10 after each workout. That means a 100 pill bottle supplies 5 workouts. That means each workout costs $11 ($55/bottle). Worst value/dollar I’ve ever encountered in our sport.
Shame on BioBuilde.
Protein powders have been around bodybuilding circles for eons. I remember taking protein powder over 25 yrs ago when I belonged to an iron gym, and the stuff was old news even back then.
Your body can only utilize so much protein and most peope get more than enough in their normal diets. Your body excretes excess protein metabolites in the urine and all the powder ever did for me was make me pass a lot of gas. Not very romantic if you’re trying to impress some pretty young thing with your big biceps.
You can get protien from vegetarian sources as long as you mix your amino acid combos right by combining the right foods. A lot has been written on this. Also if you’re a vegetarian, do check what the sources of these protein powders are. More than likely they’re animal products.
Read closely and it advises 10 before, 10 after and 10 more 6 hrs later, thats 30 a day!
AndyA
Haha, i don’t think you can live as a vegetarian in todays society on a religous or ethical basis and not be a hypocrit.
Please explain.
-Zo
The $5-$15, buys a lot of protein. Even if it’s poorly utilized, say 10%, your still likely to get all of your essential amino acids. They are so readily available in nature, that we don’t have to make them. It’s one of those economies of evolution, where a species loses the ability to synthesize those things that are easily obtained in the diet.
Think I’d have some eggs, cottage, tofu or maybe some whey powder instead. Even some beans.
For the non-vegetarians that buys some pretty good fish or even beef.
A shameless plug of an almost useless product, in my opinion.
On Triathlete Magazine’s web site, under nutrition, they say the following:
"3. Don’t overindulge on protein
Protein needs during intense training sessions are higher due to an increased turnover of amino acids and a subsequent breakdown of muscle tissue. The average well-nourished athlete, however, consumes more than adequate protein to help repair exercise-induced muscle damage. During the racing season, an endurance-trained athlete may consume as much as 1.6 grams of protein per pound body weight, a number that far exceeds the amount recommended in recent research.
The maximum usable amount of protein for active adults is estimated at 1.0 grams per pound body weight. Excessive protein will not be used to build more lean body mass; rather, it is excreted in your urine. During the off-season, protein needs are lower due to the decreased oxidation of amino acids and less muscle damage consistent with lower activity levels. However, if high training levels are maintained in the off-season, protein needs will remain higher than the average American. Refer to Table 1 to determine a protein intake appropriate for your level of off-season training.
Try to consume two small servings every day of protein-rich foods in addition to getting protein from two to three dairy servings. Dietary sources of protein should comprise 15 percent of your total energy intake. Table 2 offers a guide for the amount of protein found in some commonly eaten animal and plant foods."
What they don’t mention is, if you have a few thousand dollars for us for an ad, we’ll be glad to let you bilk our readers into thinking otherwise.
Uh, tell Bill Pearl (5 time Mr Universe and vegetarian) that he’s not a serious athlete. Or Desmond Howard. Or Hank Aaron. The list goes on and on…
It may be seem shocking to you but not eating meat does not mean you are not serious…
Aardvark – When I was reading the article I kept looking for the small print saying “Special Advertising Section”. I also thought it was suspicious that the same graph was on the same page as the article. Seems totally unethical and shameless for them to have published this “article”.
That said, I still wonder if the testimonials from Peter Reid, George Hincapie, et al, are junk. Those are pretty serious athletes to be endorsing a product which doesn’t have any value if it is truly not worthwhile…I’m surprised that they would do it even if they were offered a decent sum…
Actually… why stop with just BodyBuilde? Triathlet Mag. has a long history of using reviews as nothing but glorified advertisements. It seems the product’s reviewed must maim or kill someone before it will get a marginal negative review (and, that’s only if they didn’t advertise in the issue). This editorial policy is not new… it’s just that BodyBuilde only took Triathlete’s idea of a product review (or in this case, an “informative” article) to a new level of bias and conflict of interest.
FWIW Joe Moya
BTW, if you want to e-mail the editor… don’t use the April issue’s e-mail address… it’s wrong… how ironic.
correct e-mail address is… Mhoyer@triathletemag.com
In reply to Zo and recklar
Were they true vegans?
Hank Arron played baseball, that doesn’t require a fraction of the muscular endurance of cycling. There are some very unathletic people who excel at baseball (and almost all take some form of steriod, i’m sure that’s healthy). I have serious doubts you can become mr universe without abusing something. I know plenty of vegitarian cyclist, they all take supplements and eat eggs. Highly processed supplements who’s contents aren’t regulated by anyone aren’t healthy or natural. Meat, eggs, and fish are natural, and in the right amounts, very healthy. Humans are a superiour species, our minds and bodies give us the ability to grow, gentically alter, and harvest other animal species for our survival, benefit, and convienence. thank you evolution.
If you do it for ethical reasons, then you should get rid of your car, leather cycling shoes, any shoe/clothing item made in a sweat shop that exploits humans (as opposed to emotionless animals, becuase if they did that would be wrong), any vegitable grown with fertilizer, almost every modern medication known to man, any milk products, and wwhatever else, teh list goes on forever. If you don’t, then your reasoning is misguided (or atleast uneducated) and i consider your actions to be hypocritical.
To take this even further off topic, most of the vegans and pita (or is it peta?) freaks out there are stuanch liberals that support abortion and the death penalty. that certainly demonstrates sound logic and good ethical reasoning.
“stuanch liberals that support abortion and the death penalty”
Mmmmm, I think you have some more editing to do. Gotta go git me some “vegitables” now.
mobiusnc
I only edited my post in order to respond to 2 seperate post in one response. Don’t nock my spelling, nock my argument. I don’t waste time spell checking on this site. I don’t care about this forum enough to do that. I do spell check on my own websites, but i make money doing that, so it’s worth my while.