My wife is a vegiterian and has been told that iron and protein suppliments are inadequate. She runs (about 30 miles per week/5 days a week) and does yoga a few days. How do vegan/vegiterian athletes get adequate amounts of each? Thanks for your responses.
has been told
Told? Who cares what she’s been told. Get tested.
There are a stack of vego/vegan professional athletes in the world.
It’s pretty easy to get enough Iron. It’s ridiculously easy to get enough protien.
If someone has a problem getting enough being vego/vegan then they will have the same issues regardless- i.e. it’s them, not the food.
So much myth and hysteria.
http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm
http://www.brendanbrazier.com/
protein is easy, training is hard.
Beans (black, white, garbanzo), whole grains, avocados, whey, nuts, peanut/almond butter, and probably a few more are almost daily staples of my diet. All contain protein. You can also get a solid dose of protein from things like milk and eggs, although I eat almost no dairy. Finding protein is not an issue whatsoever if you put a little thought into it, and I didn’t even include the major fruits and veggies.
Not to mention all the soy related products. The importance of protein in diets is usually grossly overstated I find, even in endurance athletes. Certainly NOT in the order of up to 2 grams/kg of body weight that some seem to espouse. I find 1 g/kg is plenty.
There are over a billion vegetarians in the world. It doesn’t seem to hurt them any. Beware of “health experts.” Most of them don’t know WTF they are talking about.
OMG! I sooo gotta get a T shirt with that on it! Ha! We will eat meat, we predominately eat vegan. I know, it doesn’t make sense, but we believe that we have, in fact, evolved to eat meat or meat products, although not EVERY meal like most americans have found customery. We eat vegan at home, because it’s what we like. My wife is great at baking vegan etc. We are by no means extremists and we try to be reasonable about it. Basically, we’ve found that by not bringing meat into the home, we naturally limit ourselves to eating chicken, fish, or even steak when we go out to eat which usually comes up ever 2-3 weeks. We also find we avoid a lot of the social negatives of being Vegan . . . ie having trouble eating at friends houses, or going out with friends. We are simply oportunistic when we go out lol. Natural habit of most animals lol . . .and humans eat meat, however on an evolutionary time scale … not daily, perhaps weeksly or greater . . when the hunt was a success.
Don’t veggies like spinach and broccoli provide a nice dose of iron?
My wife is a vegetarian, makes no special effort to eat more protein, uses no supplements.
She is 5’10", a boston qualifier at marathon, knocking on the sub hour 40k in cycling…kinda sucks at swimming though
anyway she hasn’t had any health or performance issues
If your wife is a vegetarian its very easy to get plenty of protein/iron. If she is a vegan it still is easy you just will not have as many options. Quinoa has ample amounts of both protein and iron as well as soy. If you made room for plenty of greens, beans and the two items mentioned earlier in your diet you won’t have any issues. Some people may have an iron difficiency regardless if they ate meat or not and blame vegeterianism as the culprit. I don’t have the discipline to cut meat completely from my diet but if you did cut both meat and dairy I would think you would feel better and be healthier.
Not to mention all the soy related products. The importance of protein in diets is usually grossly overstated I find, even in endurance athletes. Certainly NOT in the order of up to 2 grams/kg of body weight that some seem to espouse. I find 1 g/kg is plenty.
are you sure about that? this is one of the reasons i’m not vegan, because soy makes me sick, and pretty much every study shows eating a lot of it is unhealthy
Look into quinoa and quinoa flour as a great source of non meat protein. A very useful grain/seed.
Was she was told by a dietician who assessed her diet? If so, then that RD can help with suggestions on how to up her protein and Iron.
Most “westerners” get more than enough protein in their diet without even thinking about it. Unfortunately a lot of the time it is low quality and part of a large, unbalanced meal…but that’s a whole other thread, LOL. Being vegetarian, your wife can get high quality, low fat protein from sources such as beans, quinoa, tofu and if she eats dairy, Greek yogurt, eggs, cheeses etc.
If she is not working with an RD, she can use an online nutrition tracker such as Fitday.com to assess her diet. Just plug in what you eat over a few weeks, it can be time consuming but you dont have to do it every day, just get a general pattern. This will give an idea of the amount of each nutrient consumed. Make sure to be consuming enough vitamin C, as it aids Iron absorption.
If she is healthy weight, has lots of energy, doesn’t get sick often, is sleeping, training and recovering well, then chances are her diet is fine.
Yes, everything that runninginaz said. Who told her she needed more protein? Was it an actual health professional who did a valid test?
If she is vegetarian and not vegan, then it’s pretty easy - eggs, protein powder, yogourt, cottage cheese, soy products, lots of legumes. If she’s vegan, then lots of info available online. It will be more challenging and take more planning but it’s doable.
Not to mention all the soy related products. The importance of protein in diets is usually grossly overstated I find, even in endurance athletes. Certainly NOT in the order of up to 2 grams/kg of body weight that some seem to espouse. I find 1 g/kg is plenty.
are you sure about that? this is one of the reasons i’m not vegan, because soy makes me sick, and pretty much every study shows eating a lot of it is unhealthy
Yeah, that’s really why I didn’t mention it in my post. I don’t really advocate the notion of ‘well I can just get all my protein from soy’, because I’m not sure we are positive yet what the concrete effects are of consistent soy consumption. What is also annoying is that you find soy in a huge percentage of everyday grocery items. I do eat soy because it is a good source of protein, but I definitely try and limit it. I might have a glass of soy milk or some soy yogurt every now and then, but never make an entire meal out of it.
OMG! I sooo gotta get a T shirt with that on it! Ha! We will eat meat, we are predominately vegan. I know, it doesn’t make sense, but we believe that we have, in fact, evolved to eat meat or meat products, although not EVERY meal like most americans have found customery. We are extreme vegan at home, because it’s what we like. My wife is great at baking vegan etc. We are by no means extremists and we try to be reasonable about it. Basically, we’ve found that by not bringing meat into the home, we naturally limit ourselves to eating chicken, fish, or even steak when we go out to eat which usually comes up ever 2-3 weeks. We also find we avoid a lot of the social negatives of being Vegan . . . ie having trouble eating at friends houses, or going out with friends. We are simply oportunistic when we go out lol. Natural habit of most animals lol . . .and humans eat meat, however on an evolutionary time scale … not daily, perhaps weeksly or greater . . when the hunt was a success.
This post made my head hurt.
Not to mention all the soy related products. The importance of protein in diets is usually grossly overstated I find, even in endurance athletes. Certainly NOT in the order of up to 2 grams/kg of body weight that some seem to espouse. I find 1 g/kg is plenty.
are you sure about that? this is one of the reasons i’m not vegan, because soy makes me sick, and pretty much every study shows eating a lot of it is unhealthy
What studies? Opinions and speculation by a handful of “experts” are not scientific studies. In fact, most real scientific studies on soy to date have shown very positive health benefits. Like I’ve said before, there are a lot of self-proclaimed “experts” out there and most of them really don’t know WTF they are talking about.
This is pretty well covered by others here. A truly varied diet, with vegetables, legumes, fruits, grains, and nuts of different types provides plenty. The people I call “twinky vegetarians,” who eat crap food, just not meat, are the ones who should be concerned. Some of my favorites that a lot of people don’t eat a lot of are kale (especially in soups and scrambled eggs), beets and quinoa.
Arbonne has a protein shake that doesn’t use whey or soy protein. It uses pea protein. I use it almost daily, and it seems to give me what I need.
Spinach is extremely popular amongst the vegan/vegetarian athletes for protein
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