Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.
Introduction by Carl Lewis to Jannequin Bennett's Very Vegetarian
September 2001
Can a world-class athlete get enough protein from a vegetarian diet to
compete? I’ve found that a person does not need protein from meat to be a
successful athlete. In fact, my best year of track competition was the first
year I ate a vegan diet. Moreover, by continuing to eat a vegan diet, my
weight is under control, I like the way I look. (I know that sounds vain,
but all of us want to like the way we look.) I enjoy eating more, and I feel
great. Here’s my story.
When I grew up in New Jersey, I always enjoyed eating vegetables and was
influenced by my mother, who believed in the importance of a healthy diet
even though we ate meat regularly because my father wanted it. At the
University of Houston I ate meat and tried to control my weight the wrong
way–by skipping meals. Frequently I would skip breakfast, eat a light lunch,
and then have my fill at dinner–just before I went to bed. Not only is
skipping meals the wrong way to diet, but the way I did it is the worst way
because your body needs four hours to digest its food before you go to
sleep.
In May of 1990 I decided to change the way I ate when I realized that
controlling my weight by skipping meals was not good for me. Within the
space of a few weeks, I met two men who changed my way of thinking and
eating. The first was Jay Cordich, the Juice Man, whom I met at the Houston
radio station where I worked in the early morning. He was there to talk
about his juicer, which makes fresh juice from fruits and vegetables. He
said that drinking at least sixteen ounces of freshly squeezed juice each
day will increase a person’s energy, strengthen the immune system, and
reduce the risk of disease. A few weeks later while doing publicity for a
meet in Minneapolis, I met Dr. John McDougall, a medical doctor who teaches
about the link between good nutrition and good health and was promoting his
latest book. Dr. McDougall challenged me to make a commitment to eating a
vegetarian diet and then to just do it.
I remember vividly making the decision in July of 1990 to become a vegan. I
was competing in Europe and ate a meal of Spanish sausage on a Saturday and
on the following Monday started eating vegan. The hardest thing for me was
changing my eating habits from skipping meals to eating throughout the
day–which is much healthier. I also missed salt and so substituted lemon
juice for flavor.
In the spring of 1991 – eight months after beginning to eat vegan – I was
feeling listless and thought I might need to add protein from meat to my
diet. Dr. McDougall, however, explained that my listlessness was due to my
needing more calories because I was training so many hours each day, not
because I needed more animal-based protein. When I increased my calorie
intake, I regained my energy. I was drinking 24 to 32 ounces of juice a day.
I ate no dairy products. And I had my best year as an athlete ever!
You have total control over what you put in your body. No one can force you
to eat what you don’t want to eat. I know that many people think that eating
a vegetarian diet - and especially a vegan diet – will require sacrifice and
denial. Jannequin Bennett demonstrates in this book that eating vegan does
not have to be tasteless and boring. As she says, “vegan eating is a truly
indulgent way of life, as vegans regularly partake of the very best foods
that nature has to offer.” Here are recipes that will excite your taste
buds. By the way, a few of my own recipes are included.
Keep in mind that eating vegan does require a commitment to being good to
your body and to acting responsibly toward the world around you. Most of us
are not aware of how much damage we do to our bodies and to our world by the
way we eat. I challenge you to write down everything you eat and drink for
one week. You will probably be amazed at the amount of snacks you eat, the
different ways in which milk and cheese are a part of your diet, and–worst
of all–how much fast food you consume.
Most snacks such as cookies, chips, candy, French fries, or soft drinks are
highly processed foods that have lost many of their useful nutrients. Worse
still, most of these foods are loaded with fat, salt, and chemicals. For
instance, a 1.5-ounce bag of barbecue potato chips has the same number of
calories as a medium baked potato, but 70 times the amount of fat and 20
times the amount of salt.
Cheese and other dairy products are loaded with artery-clogging saturated
fat and cholesterol. Most cheeses get 70 to 80 percent of their calories
from fat.
You have to be especially careful when you eat in fast food restaurants. As
the consumption of unhealthy fast food has increased, so has obesity, which
is now second only to smoking as a cause of death in the U.S. Eric Schlosser
reported in Fast Food Nation that the rate of obesity among American
children is twice as high today as it was twenty-five years ago. Moreover,
it seems that wherever people eat unhealthy fast food, waistlines start to
expand. Between 1984 and 1993, for instance, the number of fast food
restaurants in Great Britain roughly doubled. And so did the obesity rate
among adults. Overweight people were once a rarity in Japan. Fast food
restaurants arrived there thirty years ago, and today one-third of all
Japanese men in their thirties are overweight.
Your body is your temple. If you nourish it properly, it will be good to you
and you will increase its longevity.
See Video: Olympic Medals Through Vegan Diet
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