I’ve had some musings lately about how protien sources affect health and performance. I’ve come up with a few ideas that I think are pretty interesting and that I’m sure I’ll be expounding on for a while. The crux of my observation is that there is a balance between health and performance if you consider a couple of variables that are realistic for the mainstream American diet.
1. In order to increase performance output when considering sport or exercise, protien must be kept at levels around 1 gram/lb of bodyweight/day (this falls directly in the center of regulary cited exercise science recommendations).
2. This amount of protien is really hard to get for most non-athletes. This is because they have a hard time eating that much animal protien, or plant protien. So that leaves supplements, which while they’re great, aren’t “naturally occuring” in most people’s diets. Eating meat is the easiest, plus there is just something about meat protien that seems to give you energy (I came across the actual reason for this and I’ll post once I remember it).
3. Eating the amount of meat it takes to maximize performance appears through the studies cited in Dr. Furhman’s work, Eat to Live, to be a leading cause of cancer. We already know from our parents generation that it causes heart disease.
So I think that this model demonstrates a spectrum of health and performance. I call it the longevity model because the little dot is the sweet spot for longevity. You may not be the most kickass athlete ever, but you’ll more than likely be thin, able bodied, and never get cancer. Doesn’t sound too bad now does it?
