Chapter 15 Life on the Run - 14 Diets for Runners

14 Eat to Run Good news if you really love to eat A few years ago, not long after I started running, I couldn't resist eating a really big lunch one day: two hamburger patties, French fries, and a drink with milk.I cursed myself for being weak-willed on the way home from get off work.I felt physically heavy and terrified at the thought of the horrible strain I was sure to have on my run that night.If you can run the whole distance, it all depends on perseverance, and I believe that you will not feel much fun.It turned out to be the opposite, and that time I ran harder than ever.I seemed to be floating, barely touching the ground.My feet touch the asphalt, sand and grass as fast and lightly as feathers.

Think again of another running scenario.I was not full that time.I'm training for a marathon and I want to lose weight and lean.Before I even started running, I felt weak and weak.Besides, it was hot that day, in the nineties.I think about the past two runs in the same temperature, and it doesn't comfort me at all.But as I jogged slowly along the runway and adjusted my pace, it dawned on me that this, too, was not going to be an ordinary day.So I ignored the heat and ran along the sticky asphalt road with ease, feeling relaxed, powerful and not tired.At Greenwich Point, a wooded riverside park three miles from my apartment in Riverside, Connecticut, I stopped for a sip of water before running on, watching the geese play, See mule infestation and wild pheasants in flight while watching a sailboat sail down the Long Island Sound.I finally felt a little tired when I ran to the high slope near the finish line, but I didn't feel that I had to slow down.

One of the takeaways from these two runs that felt almost identical but were nutrient-differenced was that our bodies are wonderfully adaptable.Another experience is that nutrition is not the most important thing.You can improve your running ability by eating right, and you may have some success in the long run, but eating right doesn't guarantee a good run or race.There are many, many other variables in the running process. Even professional nutritionists have trouble agreeing on issues you might think are beyond debate.For example, is fasting a good idea for a runner?This may seem like a fundamental question, one that has long been answered, yet in The Athlete's Diet, Dr. Nathan Smith says: "From time to time people ask questions about the benefits of timed fasting. Fasting limited to twenty-four or forty-eight hours is not necessarily harmful to a healthy person, but an athlete who is deprived of calories for such a period of time during training cannot be expected to participate in the competition. There is no evidence that timed fasting is of any benefit to competition." However, a rather different point of view is made in the book "Eating to Improve Health" published by the editors of Runner's World: "Many people who have fasted regularly for weeks or longer have spoken of feeling 'hard as steel' and even gaining strength during the latter phase of not eating."

Even with the same regimen, two people can respond differently, so each of us has to see where we are.Roger Bannister (an authority) has said in the past: "What works for one person may not work for another. It is not difficult to create a mystical theory about the medical aspects of diet and exercise. Yes. As long as people eat normally and don’t overdo it, there’s no evidence that they have to eat special foods or take extra vitamins. I think that eating well is fundamental to getting nutrients naturally.” But, having said that, it does appear that some general principles are worth noting, especially in light of the fact that, according to several recently presented studies, undereating is surprisingly common.

Eating and drinking can be an incredibly complex affair, especially in athlete nutrition. Not long ago a group of researchers gathered in Leningrad for an international symposium on athletes' nutrition.They come from Eastern Europe, Japan, Brazil, Cuba, Great Britain, the United States, and many other countries.They argue, in and out of meetings, over subtle nutritional issues that we would all consider trivial.As George Mann, a physician who attended the conference, put it in his book Physicians and Sports Medicine: "While a lot of people competing are pretty good and pretty much the same, people turn their attention to the training factors that give the athlete some small benefit."

The average runner does not need to master such subtle nutritional knowledge, and most runners above the average level do not need to master this knowledge.We need only have a general understanding of how to eat reasonably. Since we all make so many mistakes on purpose—like drinking a glass of beer or eating a slice of cake—it makes little sense to get very nervous about this one.Therefore, this chapter examines only some of the accepted principles of athlete nutrition.I have written this chapter assuming that you already know or can easily discover the general rules of nutrition.By now, after all, you have been living on your own for such a long time.

First of all, an idea should be discarded.Some insist that there are certain "magic foods".There is no such thing. L. Joan Bogart and other authorities put it this way in the book "Nutrition and Physical Health": "A rich diet consisting of meat, milk, fish, poultry, eggs, various grains, pods and hard nuts Nuts, green leafy vegetables, and other vegetables, as well as fruit, will meet all the nutritional needs of the athlete. Vitamin pills and special supplements are not needed and should not be relied upon, as they can create a false sense of , thinking their nutritional needs will be met by taking them, when in fact he may still be deficient in protein and minerals.” Dr Thomas Basler, quoted earlier, also stated the opinion of the American Medical Runners Says, "We're not advocating the consumption of any particular supplement. We recommend avoiding highly refined foods: sucrose, starches, saturated fats, and distilled alcohol." Instead, Basler says, include fresh fruit, lettuce A normal, well-prepared diet consisting of meat and not much meat is most suitable.

In this regard, there is really no such thing as a "health food," even if we call some foods that way.For example, a can of fruity yoghurt, which is often viewed as a health food, contains about 250 calories, which is about the same as a comparable serving of ice cream.Still, if you're better off buying groceries at so-called health food stores, there's no reason not to.And it might make sense to do so in order to avoid the pesticides, herbicides and fungicides that are now making their way into the foods we eat in abundance.But from a nutritional point of view, health food has exactly the same effect as ordinary food.

(Two notable exceptions are refined sugar and white flour, neither of which is very good for us and, as far as sugar is concerned, possibly quite harmful.) For many years it was believed that athletes needed more protein than other people.Nutritionists now agree that this is not the case.What you do need to increase are carbs, especially before runs longer than an hour.The reason is that people have a function of changing the chemical energy in food into mechanical energy.This process is relatively complex, so complex in fact that if you thought about its specifics while running, you might worry to such an extent that you would be paralyzed by the side of the road.Several entire books have been written on the subject.

(One of the most succinct and brilliant books is The Running Body by E. C. Frederick.) In fact, you just know this: you just have to remember that protein, despite its Other reasons are important, but not so great in generating energy.Several research reports have shown that a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet results in a significant reduction in energy, while the opposite diet—a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet— — but increases energy.One reason is that approximately ten percent less oxygen is required to produce a metabolic change for a given amount of carbohydrate energy.Another reason is that a high-carbohydrate diet allows the muscles to get more than usual amounts of glycogen, which the body oxidizes into energy once it turns it into glucose.

None of this means that eating too many carbs will make you gain anything other than weight.However, it does mean that when it comes to your food choices, it's best to favor carbohydrates over fat.I stopped by Bob Glover's office one day and went in to check on him.It was Wednesday, and Glover was scheduled to run a fifty-mile race on Saturday.As we sat talking, he kept breaking off a raisin cookie and stuffing it into his mouth.In the eyes of a non-athlete, eating this kind of thing is abnormal, but Glover knew what he was doing. (He won fifth in that race, and pretty much felt good throughout the run.) What Glover did was what most elite athletes did before long-distance running.People refer to this as a satiated carbohydrate meal, or in more scientific terms, a supercompensation.Researchers have found that if the human body does not get carbohydrates within a few days, and then given a large amount of carbohydrates, the energy-producing glycogen in the muscles may increase by as much as 300%. The results are: first , with more energy; and second, that dreaded moment of so-called "drainage," when the body's stored energy is depleted, can be delayed, and perhaps avoided altogether.As mentioned in the previous chapters, men are more likely to be "burned out" than women.This is because women have more natural fat than men, so they can prevent depletion for much longer than men. The practice of eating carbohydrate-rich foods is still a recent phenomenon.Paul Fetterscher, a long-distance runner from Long Island, said: "Only ten years ago, we used to eat a steak the night before a race. Now we gorge on macaroni and stuffed buns. "Satiating food with carbohydrates is a method developed by a Swedish physiologist named Eric Hartmann. The whole process takes exactly one week, although the time that is most suitable for individual physical conditions varies from person to person. • Go for a long, grueling run on the first day. General training followed for three days, and the diet was very low in carbohydrates and rich in protein.In the last three days, eat more carbohydrate-containing foods than usual-bread, macaroni, cakes, etc., and reduce the protein content.After such nourishment, the muscles are full of glycogen that can be stored. ("Satiating" is a somewhat misleading term. It doesn't mean to fill you up. You should eat your usual portion, just changing the ratio of the nutritional content of the food.) Studies of marathon runners have shown that those who eat this way perform far better than those who don't.However, not every long-distance runner eats carbohydrate-containing foods according to this principle.Frank Short followed the second part of the formula (eating high-carb foods), but not the first part (eating low-carb foods).He believes that when he trains hard, every run is a glycogen depletion.He doesn't see the need to get rid of his glycogen) because it's gone. Nutrition researchers don't all agree that eating carbohydrate-containing foods is one.good idea.Even Eric Hartman says it's not always a good idea.He points out that since every gram of glycogen is hydrated with three grams of hydration, the added weight in the muscles can hamper muscle action. Many elite runners have similar reservations.Don Dixon (a documentary filmmaker) ran his fastest marathon at the age of forty-nine with a time of 2 hours and 41 minutes.He also, like Short, did not follow the requirements of the first part.But he did an extremely strenuous run and then ate a lot of carbohydrates over the course of three days. Most runners eat like everyone else, and don't even need extra vitamins, no matter how hard they work out, except for a carb-loaded meal.But you should pay attention to eating green and yellow vegetables and fresh fruits, which are important sources of vitamins needed for carbohydrate and fat metabolism.Twelve hundred to fifteen hundred calories (provided they are taken from a wholesome variety of foods) will give you the vitamins you need.Some vitamins are excreted if you eat too much.Other vitamins—such as vitamins A and D, which are soluble in fat—are stored in the body and can have harmful effects if accumulated in excess over a period of time.Years ago, after Linus Pauling praised vitamin C for its role in warding off colds, I took it all winter.I had a cold, but it was so mild that it kept me running all day.The next winter, as a test, I did not take vitamin C at all, and I only had a mild cold again.Evidently my experiments alone have not proven much, and I think running ten miles or so a day in heat, cold, ice, mud, and rain would have a strengthening effect.That said, many runners, including one doctor I spoke with, swear by vitamin C. One exception to the general rule that runners should eat normal food is not to do so shortly before a running race or long training session, when food (at least the amount of food) ) are indeed very relevant.It is best to avoid foods like eggs, ham and sausage in large quantities; instead, eat toast or muffins with jam or honey.Some runners can eat a large stack of pancakes (a traditional meal before the Boston Marathon), or bowls of porridge, but such foods leave many of us with stomach cramps. Bloating, especially if eaten less than five or six hours before a race.Remember that what you eat on the day of the race won't do much to boost your energy until it's too late.What you eat just keeps you from feeling hungry. This may seem counterintuitive, but a study conducted by Oklahoma State University proves it to be true.The university's sixty-eight football players were divided into four groups.One group had steak for breakfast; another group had pancakes; and a third group had cereal.The fourth group ate nothing.The football players ran two miles later that day.There is no difference in their movements.In other words, it doesn't matter what you eat, or even whether you eat or not, before your run. It's long been thought that it's unwise to try to eat sugar to store up extra energy before or during a run.Sugar can cause cramping, nausea and, in some cases, an exaggerated response that lowers a person's blood sugar below normal.But at a recent medical conference, a Stockholm doctor and researcher named Johan Wallen presented evidence that eating sugar during a run might boost energy.But there's no point trying to eat anything else in the middle of a race: you can't digest it.Your body is too busy pumping blood and oxygen and attending to complex chemical reactions to digest food.No matter how hungry you feel (and you probably don't feel hungry at all), you won't starve, not even during a marathon. All you really care about is moisture.Losing as little as a quart of water can slow you down, and losing two quarts can do real damage.So timely replenishment of fluids is very important.As mentioned earlier, coaches tend to think that sweating during a workout is a good thing, but drinking water is a bad thing; it used to be thought that suffering from thirst would strengthen an athlete.Research on the subject has shown that this is not the case.The body works best when fluids are being replenished, and it is best for people to drink cool (but not ice-cold) beverages immediately after fluid loss. After a run, it takes a while before you feel hungry because your body is busy getting back to normal. If you eat right away, you may feel nauseous or have stomach cramps.A surefire way I've found is to wait until your body tells you it's ready to eat before eating.Trust it, it knows if it's ready.Until then, some drinks will do.Rudy Orme, a cardiologist and long-distance runner in Massachusetts, recommends drinking a variety of beverages—soup, water, juice, soft drinks, and maybe a little beer.Because the body loses all kinds of water while running, there's no single drink that will exactly make up for your losses, he explains.Let your body choose, like in a cafeteria, and it will find what it needs, he says. Can I drink?Many serious runners enjoy the occasional beer.Nothing.No one is a heavy drinker, although it is said that a fairly famous runner drank nine or ten bottles of beer a day, and an excellent marathon runner in our country drank more than a case of beer a week. (I don't know what they did, since they've always been small.) For me, there's nothing better than a cool beer after a long, strenuous run. (It will make up for the calories you lose over the course of a few miles, but that's not much of a price to pay.) The inventive Dr. Basler even came up with a medically justified beer drink. Why: He points out that dehydration from long-distance running can lead to kidney stones, especially when training in hot, dry climates.He said that if you drink water, you will stop feeling thirsty until your kidneys get enough water.Not so with beer, as everyone who drinks beer knows that most of it goes directly into the kidneys. Basler's proposal was not universally endorsed and was sharply dismissed by Harold Moody, chairman of the South Carolina Commission Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse.Alcohol, however, kills fewer people than common foods such as sugar, starches and saturated fat, Bassler points out.He writes: "A runner who maintains enough miles (3,000 to 6,000 miles a year) and is well supplied with nutrients need not feel compelled to down a few beers." That said, if you want to get really serious about running, you might decide not to drink at all.It is, after all, about putting on weight (it's all calories), and besides disrupting the coordination of body parts, making you less able to process oxygen and reducing muscle strength, as noted earlier in this book, It also adversely affects your heat tolerance.Research reports do show that even a single beer can affect your ability to run on a hot day, and that effect can last as long as two days. However, if the question were to decide whether to quit drinking or smoking, I would have no qualms about quitting alcohol or smoking. Just fifteen puffs can reduce the body's ability to process oxygen by 31 percent.In fact, I don't know of a single serious runner who smokes, and I suspect none.Participating in the post-running banquet makes people feel particularly happy, that is, in a hall with two or three hundred people, there is not a single smoking person to be seen. It's a rare phenomenon in this smoggy era. Can I have coffee and tea?Both drinks contain caffeine, which stimulates the central nervous system, energizing, increasing mental activity and releasing the adrenaline rush.Whether it should be considered a drug in athletic competition is a matter of much debate. (It was once on the International Olympic Committee's list of stimulant drugs, but has since withdrawn it.) I enjoy coffee and tea and have had no detectable adverse effects from them, so I'll probably keep drinking them.The same goes for most runners. Runners are sometimes afraid to drink milk because of a condition called "cotton mouth."I've never had it, and one person said it was "caused by dryness and discomfort in the mouth".People thought it was caused by drinking milk, but it wasn't, according to researchers at the University of Connecticut's Physical Performance Laboratory. They say cotton mouth is not caused by drinking too much milk, but by too little fluid in the body. A growing interest in running may prompt you to delve deeper into nutrition, and you can undoubtedly learn a lot from it.But whatever regimen you decide to adopt, no matter how standard or idiosyncratic, be careful not to copy it unquestioningly.Remember that your body is not exactly the same as another person's. Don't be afraid to try something different, because most good runners develop some sort of unique eating routine sooner or later in their search for fuel-fueled foods.When I was talking to Ted Corbett (a former Olympic marathon runner) one afternoon, I was startled to see him nibbling on a large raw sweet potato.Bob Glover eats baby food during a distance running race.Don Dixon always kept several cans of sardines in his office.Each of them is convinced, and perhaps rightly so, that their particular food confers some special benefit on them. There's no way to probe every particular nutritional interest of a runner.Every April, about 3,000 people run the Boston Marathon, and I'd wager that each one of them trains on a different diet. But it is said that there is a way of eating that is supported by many runners enough to be studied carefully, and that is vegetarianism.I remember lying on a cool patch of grass after an intense long run in Meriden, Connecticut, listening to Amby Burfort (a lean, wealthy man who won the 1968 Boston Marathon) bearded teacher), whispering to a few other runners about his vegan regimen.But I didn't know how many vegan buddies Burfort had, or why, until after I'd been running for a long time. One reason I was so slow to discover this is that a typical vegan runner is not a convert to his faith.I admit, I always thought vegetarians were a bunch of idiots, and I thought they must be as fanatical about their beliefs as any other devout believer.But they eat what they think is good food, and live quietly on fruits and vegetables and nuts, not caring whether you or I join them.Many of them, like Corbett and Burfort, are really good runners. Vegans claim that the way they eat gives them energy.They like to cite examples of people like: Murray Rose, the swimmer who won two Olympic gold medals in 1956: the outstanding Australian runners Herb Elliott and John Landy and Johnny Weissmuller, who became After becoming a vegetarian, he went on to set six world swimming records. Of course, these people may also be some lucky ones who have achieved good results despite poor diet.However, if you believe the results of the scientific studies put forward by vegans, you know that they are obviously not the kind of people who get away with it. One of their favorite studies was done as far back as 1907, which compared the endurance of fifteen meat-eaters and thirty-four vegetarians.When the meat-eaters were asked to hold their arms outstretched for as long as possible, only two could last fifteen minutes, and none of them could last thirty minutes.Among the vegetarians, 22 people maintained this posture for 15 minutes, and 15 people maintained it for more than 30 minutes (it is said that one person maintained this posture for three hours). Moreover, the reason for being a vegetarian is not only based on the energy factor.It is also based on many other factors, some of which seem to be quite convincing. One argument, for example, is based on physiology.Vegetarians say that humans are not supposed to eat meat at all, so people sometimes choke to death on eating meat.Man is different from wolf, who uses its spike-like teeth to tear the meat into big pieces, and then swallows it whole.Humans use their teeth to bite first and then chew, which is ideal for bananas, pumpkins or carrots, but not at all for sautéed steaks.Dr. W. S. Collens of the Mimonides Hospital in Brooklyn said at a medical conference held not long ago: "The tooth structure of herbivores is a sharp incisor and a flat round molar for crushing and grinding." Crushed food. This shows that the phylophysiological structure of these animals is to eat vegetables, leaves, plant roots, fruits, nuts and grass. The study of the teeth of modern humans shows that he has purely All the characteristics of herbivores." Vegetarians say that our ability to absorb cholesterol is so poor, and according to a study report, the number of strict vegetarians suffering from heart disease is only one-sixth of others, the reason is that here.First, our physiology is not prepared for us to eat so much cholesterol, if any cholesterol at all. Vegetarians and many others say that eating meat by itself is not good for you anyway.It's high in fat, which predisposes people to heart disease -- and, at least in animals, to cancer.Meat breeds bacteria and is not as easy to digest as vegetarian food.Also, most of the cured meats that most of us like to eat are actually spoiled. (A look at some of the more graphic pamphlets published by vegetarians is enough to scare you away from the food, not to mention their valid arguments.) On a final note, vegetarians tell us that the vegetarian movement is almost as old as mankind, and therefore thoroughly vindicated over the centuries.In fact, it is believed that the founder of the movement was none other than Pythagoras.Others who championed the diet included Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Milton, Newton, Voltaire, Rousseau, Thoreau, Tolstoy, and the animal-loving Saint Francis of Assisi, Italy. In an effort to learn more about vegetarian athletes, I visited one day a remarkable woman named Frances Goulart (the reader will recall that this was the lady mentioned earlier who was bitten by a dog).Mrs. Goulart was thirty-eight years old, weighed only eighty-five pounds, and had written three books on vegetarian food.The first book, titled "Shallow Views," collected an extremely wide variety of non-meat recipes and devoted considerable space to their nutritional value. The book "Ecological Cream Rolls" is dedicated to introducing sugar-free after-dinner snacks, and "I wish you a full meal!" " researches natural foods you can use to feed your favorite animals (I swear I didn't make this up). Mrs. Goulart lives at the end of a narrow dirt road in rural Connecticut with her husband, Ron, a prolific writer of science fiction, and their two sons.She runs nine or ten miles a day, in addition to cycling, swimming and playing tennis. Mrs Goulart said: "I eat things that some people may not like. First of all, meat contains appetite stimulants; when you first stop eating meat, you will want to eat meat. To It took a while to get used to being a vegetarian." Mrs. Goulart explained that there are three types of vegetarians: the first are 100 percent vegetarians, sometimes called vegans, and the second are milk-drinking vegetarians, who do not prohibit drinking milk and eating dairy products; Three are vegetarians who do not reject milk and eggs. They drink milk and eat eggs.Mrs. Goulart is a vegetarian who drinks milk and eats eggs. She said: "People are gradually getting used to eating vegetarian food. Once Ron was writing a book about food, I decided to try not to eat meat for a short period of time. I felt better immediately, I seemed There is no need to eat meat. First, your body doesn't have to work as hard to digest fruits and grains, so your body feels better.It's an obvious truth that if your body isn't busy doing other things, you'll have more energy to use for running. " My next question made Mrs. Goulart smile; she had heard such questions before.she says: "No, vegetarian food is not just different, it's better, especially when you're older. When you're young, it's much easier to put up with meat, but when you're old it becomes a real problem. " Mrs Goulart believes nutrition schools in the US are complicit in keeping people informed about the benefits of a vegetarian diet.she says: "These schools are very conservative. They know something, yes, but they are half a century behind the times." Mrs. Goulart is not only a runner, but also an athlete who participates in running competitions.She set several records in women's running and won quite a few prizes.Since she credits her diet in large part for her running success, she's more than willing to pass her knowledge on to others.As I bid her good-bye, she thrust a brown paper bag into my hand and told me to warm it up before eating."It's a loaf of wheat bread. Just what you would eat before a marathon for a carb-loaded meal," she said. Since Mrs. Goulart raved about the food and thought it was an ideal food for a runner, I asked her to copy me the recipe.The content is as follows: Wheat bread: 4 tablespoons chopped onion or green onion, 1 clove of garlic, peeled and chopped, 2 tablespoons of walnut oil, 1/2 cup of dried bulgur) 1/2 cup of salted walnuts, 1 egg lightly beaten 1/4 cup ground soybeans, 1 teaspoon or more) cooking seasoning for poultry, 1 teaspoon vegetarian salt (vegetarian salt, available at health food stores, contains spices, Herbs, Dried Vegetables, Sea Salt, and Alcohol.), Pepper (more or less to taste), 1/2 teaspoon hickory-smoked salt, 1/4 cup fresh Romano or Parmesan, half a Large potatoes (those grown with organic fertilizers where possible) are washed and mashed with their skins on. 1. Saute the chopped onion and garlic in walnut oil in a skillet) Add the crushed wheat, fry while adding, pour the walnut oil on top; cover tightly and steam for fifteen minutes. 2. Grind the walnut meat into fine grains and stir with the eggs.Place in a bowl with soy flour, seasoning, and cheese. 3. Add steamed bulgur and potatoes to the bowl and knead carefully with your fingers.If still need moisture, add a little milk or broth.Bake for thirty minutes at 325 degrees. Mrs. Goulart also sent me books, articles and pamphlets on vegetarianism.In the process of reading in the next few days, I learned that vegetarianism is not just about not eating meat; it is also about exploring the kind of pure and wholesome food.For example, most vegetarians don't like to eat white sugar or white flour, although this is not a vegetarian diet.Sugar was thought to be a factor in atherosclerosis, gout, vitamin B deficiency, and even cancer, and its role in causing dental caries was well documented at the time.一位前奥林匹克举重优胜者鲍勃·霍夫曼谈到食糖的影响时说：“在仅仅五分钟之内就可以使一周的训练前功尽弃。”至于精白面，一位了解情况的人士说，它的营养的缺乏已经到了虫子都不去碰它的地步。 素食者往往不象其他人那样喜欢烹煮食品，因为他们说，热将破坏酶、矿物质和氨基酸。一天晚上我的妻子和我在古拉特夫妇家吃晚饭，正餐前的小吃就是芹菜、番前和干酪，饭后的甜食只是新鲜水果。（可能是出于对我们以及古拉特夫人的丈夫——一位非素食者——的尊重，正餐的菜是烹调了的。） 如果你决定试试吃素的话，怎么开始呢？大多数素食的权威主张你慢慢地开始，以便使你的身体和你的思想有适应的机会。一个办法就是做一个计划在一两周的时间内变换食物的内容。在这段时间内，肉食的数量越来越少，而植物蛋白的数量越来越多。素食者建议同时吃几种不同的豆类。这会增进它们的蛋白质的价值，因为它们往往是互相补充的。 许多人认为，不吃肉就得不到足够的蛋白质，但是植物能提供很多的蛋白质。 谷类含有百分之十的蛋白质。各种普通的豆类含有百分之二十五的蛋白质，大豆的蛋白质含量是百分之四十。只有一种基本的营养是从植物中得不到的，那就是维生素12。为了摄取这种维生素，需要吃一些补充食品。 要活得象墨西哥的著名的特拉胡马拉印第安人那样健壮的话，以上这一切只不过是所要付出的很小的代价。特拭胡马拉印第安人不仅是异乎寻常地长寿。而且经常在崎岖不平的山路上一次连续跑上二百英里。他们就是靠吃玉米、豆类、南瓜做到这一点的，几乎不喝牛奶，不吃肉或蛋，很象我们的索食者主张采用的膳食。