Diets designed for Athletes

Maryann Karinch. Human Kinetics 2002. 222 pages paperback, £12.99. ISBN 0-7360-3834-5

This appears at first to be the standard account of what food is for, how it works (energy systems etc), which you can find in most similar books on sports nutrition. But in reality its focus is on ‘engineered foods' which ‘aim to combine good nutrition with convenience.' Hence the author's concentration on the vast range of supplements, energy bars, sports drinks, prohormones and other substances which are keeping the executives of giant food corporations in luxury. I'm still not clear about how far this fits with Ms Karinch's wish that everyone should enjoy a balanced diet and avoid processed food, except that hundreds of phytochemicals in fruit and vegetables ‘are not yet (my italics) captured adequately in supplement form'. So there's still hope. After all, agriculture cannot be held to blame for all our ills: the human metabolism was sorted several hundred thousand years before we grew crops and kept cattle.

Of course Ms Karinch is often right: many athletes' diets are unbalanced, especially those of bodybuilders (are they athletes ?). My generation was taught that rare steak was the standard pre-competition meal for endurance athletes, and that too much fluid, even on a hot day, was bad for you.

But Barry Sears and his Zone diet get so many mentions that I thought there'd be a credit for sponsorship. His recommendation that your protein portion at a single meal should be no bigger than the palm of your hand is good, but Sears' 40% CHO, 30% protein, 30% fat is a poor formula for an endurance athlete, and you really can get all your protein from your diet without needing supplements.

Ms Karinch spends a lot of time on supplements: glutamine is favourite, but she offers plenty of others – amino acids, chrysin, chondroitin, creatine, ginseng, glycerol, L-carnitine and tribulus, to name some of them. In most cases there is no scientific basis for the claims made for them, and most of them are merely expensive ways of enhancing your urine.

She's keen on whey and casein products too, especially as recovery aids; and it's true that a little protein added to your post-race drink will speed recovery; but eating chicken works just as well. She offers a guide to help you avoid being exploited, but there is an even easier way to do that.

I was fascinated by her endorsement of Victor Conte and his BALCO outfit. Apparently old Vic used to send his lads out to buy other people's supplements and was dismayed when their levels were still low. So he began to design his own drugs and market them through his coaches, with the result that a hundred or so athletes have been banned and Victor is, as I write, serving a richly-deserved four months in a California jail.

Since bodybuilders and weightlifters are major targets of her advice it's not surprising that there are no fewer than seven pages on prohormones, the most notorious of which is androstenedione. They convert to anabolics (nandrolone, testosterone) in the body and most of them are banned outside the US. Androstenedione, freely and cheaply available on the Internet, is probably responsible for the huge number of nandrolone positives in recent years in all sports – and don't think they're taking it by accident. Athletes interviewed on TV will confess to taking ‘handfuls' of vitamins and supplements without much idea of what they do, except that they think it might make them go faster.

All in all, this book will give you some basic and incontrovertible information on nutrition, and lists of lots of supplements, some of them illegal in sport. But you can undoubtedly do better.

There are 3 pages of resources and reference, a glossary, an excellent index, and a sample health questionnaire. And a few phrases which, thanks to our tabloid press, no British writer would use unknowingly nowadays: ‘When was the last time I bonked?,' would keep the average Sun reader in stitches for a fortnight.

Ramin Minovi