Originally published June 19 2010
Run Faster without Fast Food as Fuel
by David Hestrin
(NaturalNews) For being a 16 time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps may be the greatest athlete of all time who eats the worst diet of all time. His infamous eating takes it to the extreme by consuming more than 10,000 calories a day mostly from junk food and by taking endorsements from the junk food corporations which encourage all people to do the same.
This has become common - for an individual to reach the point of athletic heroics, only to sell their fame to promote substances linked to cancer, diabetes, and obesity. Dunking a basketball is seen in advertisements to be an act fueled by soda, as if the high fructose corn syrup helps the player get high in his jump.
Where are the elite athletes that point to proper rest, adequate fruit and vegetable consumption, and pure drinking water as keys to their success story? How can athletes like Michael Phelps and Michael Jordan be heroes when they promote diets of junk food that cause obesity, heart disease and environmental degradation?
Where are the exemplars of athletic performance that are fueled not by fast food but by the healthiest food imaginable?
Enter, "The Fruitarian": 32 year old ultra marathon runner, husband, father of three, successful business owner, and recent first place finisher of the New Jersey Marathon, Michael Arnstein. Arnstein is a winning ultra marathoner fueling his thousands of miles of running on fruits and vegetables alone.
The needs of elite athletes
To some doctors and journalists, the fact that Michael Phelps` training needs were so high (10,000-12,000 calories daily) seemed to justify junk foods. However, Arnstein demonstrates quite clearly that an individual's high caloric requirements can simply be satisfied by eating larger quantities of fruit and vegetables!
Arnstein eats what Dr. Douglas Graham calls "instantaneous food" - meaning ripe raw organic fruit. Arnstein`s version of an energy drink? Fresh squeezed tangerine juice and lots of it.
On the day he ran a 100 kilometer race, Arnstein drank the juice of 40 pounds of honey tangerines. The juice contained over 9,000 calories, plenty of calcium, magnesium, vitamin C, and here`s what might be a real shocker to most people - 200 grams of protein. If he needed another 1,000 or 1,500 calories, he could just eat a meal of 10 or 15 ripe bananas, something he does quite frequently.
Most people eat for stimulation and not nutrition, according to Michael Arnstein. He calls breads, pizzas, and pastas "stucco." He points out that these are junk foods and the added spices irritate the digestive tract causing the production of mucus which decreases nutrient absorption - unlike fruit that digest efficiently and cleanly.
Michael Arnstein`s blood tests and health results have been found by doctors to be in optimal condition: across the board they are found as optimal, including B-12 levels and iron levels. Since changing from a cooked vegan diet to a fruitarian diet, his running times have improved to higher levels than they have been in ten years and he identifies the clean and quick digestion of organic fruit as the cornerstone of this transformation.
He eats fruits in massive quantities. To get a picture of this, think Michael Phelps at a tropical fruit farm in Hawaii instead of a fast food joint, and you`ll get some idea of the quantity.
However, unlike Michael Phelps, Michael Arnstein has no expectation for junk food corporations to call with an endorsement offer, but considering he can easily eat 40 pounds of oranges a day and gets faster all the time, those big fruit growers just might want to get this guy's number on speed-dial.
Sources used include: http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/fruits-an... http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/08/13/the-m... and http://www.thefruitarian.com/
About the author
David Shlomo Hestrin is the author of The "Cure" For Blur an e-book written to help people improve their eyesight naturally by improving their relaxation and enjoyment of life. He also does health and nutritional research for the Better Earth Institute.
http://thecureforblur.com
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