Fit folks avoid red meats – but hard-training athletes often have more trouble giving up the beef than most other people.
It’s not hard to figure out why.
While it’s true that most important nutrients found in beef are also plentiful in veggies, beans, and other foods, beef does do some things that most other foods don’t.
Animal products are the only source of vitamin B12. No beef means no B12, an important nutrient, unless you pop a supplement pill.
Iron comes in two types – heme, and nonheme. Heme iron comes only from meats and other animal tissue, and is more readily absorbed by the body than nonheme iron. Serious athletes are more prone to iron depletion – which causes fatigue, training inefficiencies, and lower performance levels. Two recent studies made the facts plain: athletes with lower levels of iron ate less meat than athletes with adequate iron.
Meats also supply zinc in a more usable fashion than vegetables or dairy products can. A 1992 study found that low zinc levels deplete muscle strength. And, like iron, zinc levels tend to be lower among serious athletes than among the general population – even more so for women athletes.
Athletes tend to overcome the unhealthy side-effects of meat-eating better than the general population. By burning more calories and leading more active lives, athletes are better able to metabolize the heavy concentrations of fat that red meats provide, and they require more sodium than sedentary folks, because they sweat out more salt when they train, so the high salt-content of many meats is less of a problem for them than for most non-athletes.
Yes, most of the dietary advantages of meat are possible to duplicate with other foods, but the simple fact is that the average athlete who avoids meat doesn’t replace all the B12, iron and zinc that he or she needs. That not only poses a long-term health risk, but it also reduces performance.