The No Meat Athlete Cookbook

this shouldn’t come as such a surprise. Some of the strongest, heaviest, and most muscular animals in nature eat diets that are almost entirely plant-based.

both the 2012 and 2014 Olympic games, vegetarian and vegan athletes won medals, and in the 2016 games, the only male powerlifter on the United States’ team was vegan

, far clearer is what this diet does for our long-term well-being and our chance of postponing or avoiding entirely the onset of the leading killers in our
society—specifically, heart disease, certain cancers, respiratory diseases, stroke, and diabetes. What’s more, some of the biggest killers—heart disease in particular—can actually be reversed by a whole food, plant-based diet,

why take the multi?

Aside from the fact that the poor quality of modern soil and other modern agricultural practices make the nutrient content of fruits and vegetables lower than those we evolved to eat, there are several nutrients that are commonly deficient in 100 percent plant-based diets. According to Dr. Fuhrman in Super Immunity, these are:
• Vitamin B12
• Zinc
• Iodine
• Vitamin D
• Vitamin K2
• Omega-3 fatty acids

Vitamin B12 deficiency is quite common, even among omnivores, and B12 is very hard to come by in a plant-based diet, with the exception of foods that are fortified with it.

A vocal contingent in the plant-based community has pointed out (accurately) that it would be more natural to eat whole and unblended fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds than to blend them into a drinkable smoothie. We’d eat fewer calories this way, since it would take more effort and more time to chew the food and the increased volume would take up somewhat more room in our stomachs than a liquid smoothie would.

you won’t hear us say things like “Eat tomatoes; they’re high in lycopene!” Because just as foods don’t get better when we artificially add nutrients to them, it’s a mistake to reduce whole foods to the key nutrients within them. It’s everything in the food—and the remarkably complex interactions of countless nutrients—that our bodies thrive on, not a single constituent.

Several ambitious and now well-known studies, including the Adventist Health Studies, the Framingham Heart Study, and the China Study (made famous by T. Colin Campbell’s book of the same name), have linked plant-based diets with the prevention of heart disease and certain cancers

The anti-inflammatory properties of plants are also crucial. While many animal products cause inflammation, phytonutrients and compounds in plant foods actually fight it.