The vegan athlete: Opening opportunities
Giving a preview of his scheduled talk in Amsterdam next month, Phil Woodbridge, human performance exercise and wellbeing technical support officer at Buckinghamshire New University, points out that the number of vegans in Great Britain is growing fast.
In fact, that number quadrupled between 2014 and 2018. In 2018 there were 600,000 vegans - 1.16% of the population.
And the sporting community is very much in-line with this overall trend, in fact, Woodbridge says Vegan Runners UK membership is up to more than 4,000.
The good and the bad
Yet scientific research into how the vegan diet impacts athletic performance has so far have been sparse and equivocal.
Those studies that have revealed a higher likelihood of nutritional deficiencies in vegan athletes have collectively suggested that the most likely vegan diet deficiencies will be in; protein, calcium, vitamin b12, serum D3, zinc, iron, iodine, selenium and Vitamin D.
The nutritional benefits of a vegan diet that have been noted are the high CHO and fibre intake and better fat profile of the vegan diet and these reason are partly why it is often assumed to be healthier to go vegan.
Woodbridge says: “One of the widespread myths is if you go vegan you will be healthier but there’s a lot of processed vegan foods so there’s good and bad vegan diets and you still need to get the balance right."
Opportunities
As well as the listed nutrition deficiencies above, Woodbridge points out that another issue that vegan runners can struggle with is energy. In fact, Woodbridge says this is the main issue that vegan runners come to speak to him about and this can even lead to a suppressed immunity.
He says this is a big opportunity for the supplements industry.
“There’s an opportunity here for energy dense plant-based products that are ethical.”
In terms of other opportunities for NPD in this market, Woodbridge points out that Vitamin B12 is generally one that vegans know to supplement with and many plant-based milks are fortified with calcium and riboflavin so these are of smaller concern.
Two other lesser known vegan diet deficiencies that have been noted in scientific literature are creatine and beta analine.
“We don’t get them in a plant based diet so supplementing these in vegans may have more of an impact on performance than it will in meat eating runners.”
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