| The Runner's Diet |
Is the Canada Food Guide Good for Endurance Runners?
Some current nutrition literature suggests that athletes should just follow the Canada Food Guide and that they don’t need extra protein. This article will discuss whether the Canada Food Guide offers good advice to runners and other endurance or high-intensity athletes.
The Canada Food Guide was first published in 1942 and was known as Canada’s Official Food Rules. The purpose for publishing the document was to prevent nutritional deficiencies and to improve the health of Canadians during the very trying times of war. This was a time of poor access to food, insufficient money for food, and malnutrition developing in some segments of the population. The publication identified six food groups (Milk; Fruit; Vegetables; Cereals and Breads; Meat, Fish, etc.; and Eggs) and recommended quantities were base on seventy per cent of the published Dietary Standard. In 1944 they dropped the term “Official” and changed the recommendations to reflect one hundred per cent of the Dietary Standard. Cheese and eggs were included in the meat group, so now there were five groups. In 1949 they replaced a recommendation regarding fish oil and made specific references for supplementation of the sunshine vitamin know as vitamin D. In 1961 they softened the language and changed the name to a “guide” from “rules.” In 1977 fruits and vegetables were combined into one group, so now there were four groups, as there are today. Textual content and recommendations became more specific and were based on information collected by the Nutrition Canada National Survey (1973), which represented the largest, most comprehensive nutritional study of the Canadian population to date. There was also input from many health-professional groups and organizations. In 1982 the emphasis changed from preventing nutrition deficiencies to preventing chronic diseases, particularly heart disease. There was emphasis given to a moderation statement, which encouraged Canadians to limit fat, sugar, salt, and alcohol. Another change of emphasis in 1992 accompanied a name change to Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating. The major change was one of philosophy to embrace a total diet approach to choosing foods. Previous food guides were based on a foundation diet concept—they identified minimum requirements. The new guide emphasized meeting energy and nutrient requirements for healthy living.
Atheletes have higher protein requirements than the Canada Food Guide recommends for average Canadians.
|
| Males 19-30 | Males 31-50 | |
| Vegetables & Fruit | 10 servings | 8 servings |
| Grain Products | 8 servings | 8 servings |
| Milk & Alternatives | 2 servings | 2 servings |
| Meat & Alternatives | 3 servings | 3 servings |
Some writers and even health practitioners have suggested that the Guide is not good for even the average citizen. Shortly after its publication, Dr. Yoni Freedhof, Medical Director of the Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa, wrote in the CMA Journal, February 2006, that the revised Guide was obesogenic. Dr. Freedhoff explained in one example that women between nineteen and fifty years who drank only water and ate no salad dressing and no dessert could take in as few as 1,700 calories, whereas other demographics could top 3,200 calories, again without the extras.
In spite of this reduction, obesity continues to double every five years. Low-fat recommendations are based on certain assumptions that have become engrained in nutrition advice, but recent research has implied a need to re-evaluate these assumptions.
Further recommend reading on this subject can be found in Gary Taube’s book Good Calories, Bad Calories and a recent MSNBC.com article entitled “What If Bad Fat Isn’t Bad?”. Both will give you “food for thought” about the fat, cholesterol, and heart disease issue.
Carbohydrates are constantly referred to as the most important source of energy but if you review Respiratory Exchange Ratio data you will find that a resting body gets up to eighty-five per cent of its energy from fat. Even during moderate running at fifty-five per cent aerobic capacity fifty to sixty per cent of calories are burned will be from fat.
Foundation of the Food Guide Revision
The revision is an elaborate series of reviews and surveys of current eating patterns, an assessment of the methods provided in the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) reports, literature reviews of nutrition and chronic disease from the Institute of Medicine, as published in Public Health Nutrition 2004 (this was the major source of the “evidence base” the committee refers to), and finally their stakeholders’ feedback. The stakeholders included the producers, manufacturers, and marketers of food, and the inclusion of this group in the process has received considerable criticism. It has been suggested that the inclusion of the stakeholders led to a number of compromises like allowing fifty per cent of grain products to come from refined white flour.Athlete Requirements
In addition to ensuring adequate energy supplies for long, intense workouts, endurance athletes need to pay particular attention to their immune systems and their protein requirements.Adequate protein is necessary to repair and build a healthy immune system, and this means more protein than the average because during prolonged intense exercise we use more protein for energy.
Since muscle-tissue breakdown or damage is common during intense and prolonged exercise, those in training need more protein and the right proteins to repair and build or rebuild muscle. Although the recommended intake of protein in most standard food guides is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, Lemon and associates at the University of Wisconsin and the Human Performance Lab at Penn State University and Vernon Young of MIT have all indicated evidence of higher requirements. This research has led many responsible sports nutrition coaches to now recommend 1.8 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day.
That would mean a seventy-five-kilogram runner (165 pounds) would need approximately 135 to 165 grams of protein per day. The Canada Food Guide and the DRIs would recommend sixty grams. With three servings of meat and alternative and only two of milk and dairy the athlete would have difficulty obtaining seventy-five to eighty grams if he chose five servings from the higher-protein-per-serving options. It is true that there is some protein in selected vegetables but not enough to add another sixty grams to the total.
This short review, although far from comprehensive, leaves us with the conclusion that the Canada Food Guide falls short in offering the endurance athlete enough adequate guidance.
It would appear to be a well-meaning and ambitious project, but it may also be an impossible task to complete with credibility because of the large variations in nutrition requirements known in human biology.
Speaking of the “extras,”
A 2004 study of Canada’s Eating Habits, published by the Health Statistics division of Statistics Canada, reported that adults obtain twenty-three per cent (almost one quarter) of their Calories from a category called “other” (meaning outside the four food groups). These items include the following, in order of popularity:
Soft drinks
Salad dressing
Sugar
Beer
Fruit Drinks
Vegetable Oil
Margarine
Chocolate Bars
Potato Chips
Butter
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In evaluating the usefulness of the food guide I made the following observations regarding serving sizes, caloric variability, carbohydrate variability in fruits, vegetables and gains and protein variability in meats and dairy products.
The following fruit choices are all one fruit serving: Carb range 5 to 27 gm; Calorie range 23 to 105.
| Carb gm | Calories | |
| ½ cup strawberries |
11 | 23 |
| ½ cup watermelon |
5 | 25 |
| ½ cup raspberries |
7 | 30 |
| ½ cup blueberries | 10 | 41 |
| 1 apple |
21 | 81 |
| 1 medium banana | 27 | 105 |
These Vegetable choices are all one serving: Carb range 1 to 15 gm; Calorie range 7 to 66.
| Carb gm | Calories | |
| ½ cup cucumber | 1 | 7 |
| 1 cup lettuce |
2 | 12 |
| ½ cup V-8 juice |
5 | 23 |
| ½ cup green beans | 6 | 25 |
| ½ cup broccoli |
5 | 25 |
| 1 medium carrot |
7 | 31 |
| ½ leek | 9 | 40 |
| ½ cup corn | 15 | 66 |
These Meat & Dairy item are all one serving: Protein range 6 to 31 gm; Calorie range 60 to 263.
| Protein gm | Calories | |
| 75 gm Pacific oysters | 7 | 60 |
| 75 gm scallops |
12 | 65 |
| 75 gm shrimp |
18 | 90 |
| 75 gm Eastern oysters |
11 | 102 |
| 75 gm tuna in water | 20 | 102 |
| ¾ cup yogurt plain |
6 | 104 |
| ¾ cup yogurt plain organic | 10 | 110 |
| 75 gm Sockeye salmon |
15 | 115 |
| 75 gm rainbow trout |
19 | 115 |
| 1 cup 2% milk |
8 | 121 |
| 75 gm pink salmon |
15 | 130 |
| 2 eggs |
12 | 150 |
| 75 gm lean beef cuts |
18 | 150 |
| 75 gm lean ground beef |
19 | 190 |
| 50 gm Cheddar cheese | 12 | 200 |
| 2 Tbsp (30 gm) peanut butter | 8 | 200 |
| 1 cup cottage cheese | 31 | 203 |
| 75 gm fatter beef cuts | 26 | 263 |
These Grain products are all one serving: Carb range 12 to 20 gm; Protein range 0 to 6gm; Calorie range 70 to 130.
| Carb gm | Protein gm | Calories | |
| 1 slice (35 gm) bread | 13 | 2 | 70 |
| 2 rice cakes (plain) |
16 | trace | 80 |
| ½ bran muffin |
12 | 2 | 85 |
| 1 slice (40 gm) sprouted wheat bread | 18 | 6 | 100 |
| ½ bagel plain | 20 | 4 | 100 |
| 10 Saltine crackers | 20 | trace | 130 |
Guidelines include an instruction that half of grain products should be “whole grain,” and that means half can still be drawn from refined white flour products. Also, sprouted grain products are not even mentioned, and they tend to be higher protein and lower glycemic index items than the current list.
About the Author
L. Lee Coyne, Ph.D., wrote “The Runner’s Diet.” A Calgary-based nutritional consultant and lecturer, Coyne is also the author of Fat Won’t Make You Fat, The Little Book of Nutritional Nuggets, and the Lean Seekers coaching program.
"The Runner's Diet" was originally published in IMPACT Magazine's March/April 2009 Running Issue.
Robert Gichuru makes this comment
Sun 19 Jul 2009 17:46:19 PDT