Introduction
All athletes at some time in their career look
at alternative ways of eating to reach their ath-
letic potential. While some athletes take pills,
powders or potions in the belief that these will
enhance their performance, others have changed
their eating styles to a vegetarian diet to gain
advantages in training and performance. Unfor-
tunately, after many years of research, the effects
of elimination of animal products from the diet
on athletic performance are still unclear. Some
data do exist on elite athletes who consume
a vegetarian diet, but studies that include
Olympic-calibre athletes are limited. In addition,
most of the research on vegetarianism in the past
decade has been focused on the health aspects of
a vegetarian diet, rather than on human perfor-
mance issues. There is certainly a lack of informa-
tion regarding vegetarianism and its relationship
to athletic performance. However, an athlete
who consumes a poorly planned vegetarian diet
may be at risk of multiple nutritional deficiencies
as well as poor physical performance.
Early meat eaters
It well known that ancient Greek athletes con-
sumed large amounts of meats and many of them
believed that their performances were depen-
dent upon animal protein. As an example, Milo
of Croton, the legendary Greek wrestler, con-
sumed huge amounts of animal protein and
trained by carrying animals across his shoulders.
As the animals grew, so did his strength. While
Milo’s diet would be viewed today as containing
excessive amounts of protein, he was never
brought to his knees in the course of the five
Olympiads in which he competed (Ryan 1981;
Whorton 1982). This concept of the need for large
amounts of animal protein was promoted in the
early 1800s by Liebig, the pre-eminent physio-
logical chemist of the time (Whorton 1982). He
believed that protein was the main substrate for
the exercising muscle. While Liebig’s hypothesis
was disproved by Atwater in the mid-1800s,
his philosophy of consuming large amounts of
protein continues to have influence even into the
modern day. Today, many athletes still believe
that, by consuming large amounts of protein,
they will become stronger and gain lean body
mass (Berning et al.1991).Early vegetarians
While many ancient Greeks were consuming
large amounts of animal protein for athletic
prowess, the founder of the philosophical vege-
tarian movement was also Greek. Pythagoras,
the Greek mathematician, is the father of
vegetarianism, and until the middle of the 19th
century, vegetarians referred to themselves as
‘Pythagoreans’ (Dombrowski 1984).
Many of the vegetarians in the mid- to late
1800s were determined to prove that their diet
was superior to that of meat eaters. As a result,
the London Vegetarian Society formed an ath-
letic and cycling club in the late 1800s to compete