Measuring the Efficacy of Diet - Athletic Performance

Measuring the efficacy of diet is an interesting topic, and there are several ways to do that, each giving a different perspective on overall quality of diet. Logic tells us diets that perform well in several measures are better than diets that perform in one.

So what are these various ways of measuring quality of diet? I've been talking about disease reversal a lot in this blog because it's job one. It's pretty clear by now that whole food plant based diets are the only way to this point to reverse heart disease, the most common cause of death in the post industrial world. Drugs can't do it, surgery can't do it, and no other diet can do it, but the WFPB diet does it with speed and efficiency.

So disease reversal is one way. Some others are cognitive performance, emotional health and stability, athletic performance, speed of recovery, resistance to any/all diseases, and longevity.

Diets vary significantly in efficacy, studies measuring all these categories would put nutrition science to very good use in my opinion, but funding may be a problem!

The basic formula for dietary efficiency (related to efficacy) is pretty simple: foods which provide sufficient energy and nutrition, with least energy requirement in conversion and utilization. Commonly cited efficiency parameters are digestive time of transit, and digestive "transparency" (we remain unaware of digestive processes).

Eating patterns that cause us to become aware of digestion are inefficient. Antacids remain the biggest selling over-the-counter medications, which speaks directly to dietary inefficiencies, and is directly correlated to epidemic levels of so-called metabolic syndrome diseases.

Getting (finally!) to the topic of this blog post, athletic performance is an interesting category because it's potentially quite definitive. At this point I'm unaware of any studies, so I hope you'll forgive me for having some fun pointing out anecdotals.

But first let's look briefly at different forms of athleticism, and what's required, because the same diet may not work equally for all of them. There are sports where absolute power is all important, and others where functional strength, or strength to weight ratio, is more important.

We even see examples of both in one sport, in pro football for example the lineman wants to to run over the guy in front of him like a truck, and a little extra weight is a very good thing. But the wide receiver wants to be lean, nimble, and fleet of foot. The lineman might outweigh the receiver two to one, but the receiver's strength to weight ratio is likely to be considerably higher.

Functional strength and endurance are two areas where whole food plant based diets begin to come to the fore in athletic performance.

Here's a short video where the visual contrast between absolute strength and functional strength is pronounced. It features Frank Medrano, whose diet is whole food plant based, and CT Fletcher, who has consumed the typical omnivorous diet of bodybuilders.