Are plant-based athletes the ultimate game-changers?
Netflix-released documentary, ‘The Game Changers,’ dispels the myth that real men eat meat. Athletes who want speedier recovery, better health, and higher performance, it argues, should go plant-based. Photo credit: gamechangersmovie.com.
For the past few years, I worked in the kitchen of a summer camp serving 350 to 400 adults and children three times a day, seven days a week. We served meat but a main focus was making sure there was a plant-based option for every meal, like vegan minestrone or vegan sesame garlic noodles. People simply won’t move towards plant-based diets if they don’t have the option.
It was a daily battle to keep the salad bar fresh with vegetables and alternative sources of protein. I was lucky to have a Salads Chef who shared a passion for providing alternatives to the common meat-based diet and, I’m happy to say, the campers ate it up. One of the reasons I kept returning to work at the camp, which is nestled in the Sierra foothills, is because it gave me a chance to have a positive impact on people’s diets, and on the environment.
James Wilks is also motivated to encourage plant-based eating, but on a far larger scale. The martial arts champion and former meat-eater experienced a serious sports injury a few years ago. He claims he spent about 1,000 hours digging into nutrition studies to put together the diet most likely to accelerate his recovery. The answer? Go totally plant-based.
The result is Game Changers, a movie aimed specifically at young men—like me. About a year before the movie was released, Stone Pier Press had a chance to speak with him at a Reducetarian conference in Los Angeles. Too often, he said, men are taught that the best way to build muscle and strength is by eating meat. They tend to tune out nutritional advice. “Young men don’t think they’ll die,” said Wilks.
Wilks sets out to demonstrate the superiority of plant-based eating by meeting young men where they are. “With this movie,” he says, “I wanted to dispel the myth that real men eat meat.”
So he sprinkles in fun facts, telling us that Roman gladiators subsisted almost entirely on plants. And he invites the cameras to follow him on his workouts. He performs a rope exercise he was able to sustainfor only eight minutes in his meat-eating days. Now, after switching to a vegan diet, he keeps going, and going. He finally stops at just after an hour, but only because he’s bored.
Blood samples from three NFL players showed an obvious difference between the physical effects of a plant and meat-based meal in the film. Photo credit.
I think he succeeds. Wilks showcases a number of high-performing athletes who have flipped to plant-based eating, and they are convincing. American footballers are shown samples of blood drawn after eating just one meal, for instance. If they’ve eaten meat, it’s cloudy, if it was plants, the samples are clear.
The scenes that had the most profound effect on me, however, were the moments with the firefighters. Everyone loves firefighters. They act as beacons of goodness even in the trying and, frankly, weird times we live in. I thought it was smart of Wilks to choose them as test subjects.
A nutritionist visits firefighters and introduces them to what he calls the Seven Day Rescue Challenge, which asks them to swap out animal products for plants for a week. Afterwards the firefighters show a dramatic drop in cholesterol and blood pressure. It’s quite a simple experiment really, which is why it’s so effective. The highest risk they face, warns the nutritionist, is not death by fire but death by heart disease.
For those of us watching, the experiment is a chance to root for these firefighters, and for everyone else who wants to make a positive change in their lives.
The film’s most moving scenes, according to the author, feature firefighters invited to switch to eating plant-based meals for a single week. “Firefighters act as beacons of goodness even in the trying and, frankly, weird times we live in,” writes Ranahan. “It was smart of Wilks to choose them as test subjects. Photo credit.
Firefighters and athletes have all been fed misinformation about how and what we should eat to improve performance. But so have we all.
The film does a good job of highlighting how dramatically the meat and dairy industry, with support from government agencies like the USDA, have spread false narratives. Most of us have grown up hearing that we need daily servings of milk and meat to be healthy, when nutritionists tell us we don’t. Wilks describes the work of Exponent, Inc., a company that provided “research” weaponized by the tobacco industry to “deny the connection between secondhand smoke and cancer.” Now Exponent, Inc. uses similar tactics to deny the connections between the overconsumption of meat and associated health risks.
But what does Evan think?
I’ve been trending towards a plant-based diet over the past year or so. The more I learn about the environmental damage the meat and dairy industry does to our planet, the less I want to support those industries. So all the food I buy these days is vegetarian or vegan. I eat animal products only if a friend is cooking for me and the food has already been paid for (to avoid food waste).
If anything this film solidifies my beliefs. So I reached out to my friend Evan, a 29 year-old sporty guy from Nevada City, California, to see what he thought. He has dabbled in vegetarian eating over the years but maintains an omnivorous diet. I asked him if the film had an impact on him and his lifestyle choices.
“It definitely made me think of meat from a performance perspective, which I had never really done before,” he told me. “You are always told that eating animal protein is how you get big and strong.”
Evan found the data convincing enough to change the way he eats, and he is now eating much less meat, and much more plant-based food, like greens, rice, and beans. “I definitely feel less sluggish, especially immediately after a meatless meal,” he tells me.
I thought the documentary made a powerful case because it did more showing than telling. (The part where three athletes had their nocturnal erections measured after eating plants or meat was near comedic. Let’s just say they’re eating more bean burritos now.)
Patrik Baboumian, known for years as “The Strongest Man of Germany,” has broken many world records for strength since becoming a vegan in 2011. He’s among the athletes featured in the film.
One criticism I have is the way the film seems to downplay the environmental impact of eating meat and dairy. The section on factory farming lasts only a few minutes. Wilks clearly wants to focus on the notion that eating plants makes your body operate at a higher level. I cannot bag on him for that but I do thoroughly believe, at this juncture, that all conversations about food should lead to a conversation about conservation and sustainability.
I still like the film and if people can help fight climate change on their way to becoming jacked, then that is collateral goodness. I appreciate that it challenges the long-held idea that meat gives you power, and offers a more sustainable path to athletic success.
The German strongman Patrik Baboumian appears in the movie, and sums up much of the argument in this almost mythical anecdote. “Someone asked me: ‘How could you get as strong as an ox without eating meat?’ and my answer was ‘have you ever seen an ox eating meat?’”
Want to change up your own game?
The following resources give you a place to start if you want to make the move to a more plant-based diet.
The Game Changers: Making it easy. Along with tips and recipes, it suggests focusing on what’s achievable. “Our approach to making dietary changes is not all-or-nothing, it’s all-or-something.”
A beginner’s guide to plant-based eating. This guide from Forks Over Knives (this film is worth viewing, too) is a nice introduction to the basics, along with tips and recipes. “Add around 1,000 calories of legumes, whole grains, and starchy vegetables to your everyday routine. These starchy foods keep you full and satisfied, so you’ll naturally eat less of the animal products and processed foods that are making you sick.”
Fuel for the fighter. Aimed at professional fighters, the site includes tips like asking restaurants to substitute tofu and grilled veggies for meat, and a list of general foods you can eat. “Remember, it is not food that builds muscles, it is training and exercise. The food gives you the nutrients to repair and grow your tissues, and the best fuel for the fighter is whole, unprocessed foods direct from the source.”
The No Meat Athlete. A nice set of guides, like The most laid-back guide to going vegetarian you’ll ever read, plus Vitamin B12 and the case for and against going plant-based. “We don’t preach. We don’t judge. We just encourage each other to live our best lives, and for many of us, that includes a lot of plants!”
21-day Vegan Kickstart. For those times you just need an app. The Physician’s Committee put it together, along with lots of plant-based recipes and guidance. “The program is called the “Kickstart” because it focuses on a short-term immersion experience that inspires long-term changes.”
Watch the trailer here:
Patrick Ranahan started cooking six years ago, both professionally and personally. He graduated from UC Davis in 2016 and now lives in Lafayette, California.