Watching all these Olympic athletes working hard out on the snowy slopes is making me hungry! They agree. ‘The best part of being an Olympian is all the free McDonald’s you can eat, and putting 60 back in one sitting,” United States halfpipe snowboarder Greg Bretz, 19, told Vanity Fair, referring to the chicken McNugget-eating competition he and his coach Ricky Bower ate to the beat of.
I have a hunch that the Olympic figure skaters are not participating in any such eating events given the pressure they are under to maintain such tiny statures. According to Joy Bauer, M.S., R.D., C.D.N., the Olympic skaters she has counseled require on average 1800 – 2500 calories per day. This restriction does not exactly accommodate the culture of an eating contest, or the enticement of unlimited McDonalds.
I also bet you that the ski jumpers of the Olympic games are not participating in any McNugget-eating competitions seeing as the nature of their sport requires them, at a height of 5’11’’ to maintain the desired weight of 135 lbs,’’ as Susie Parker-Simmons, a sports dietitian with the United States Olympic Committee told Katherine Hobson of US News & World Report. To keep their bodies at such a low BMI, they cannot count on medaling in any eating contests, that’s for sure, unless it was maybe celery.
Perhaps the cross-country skiers could afford to take a stab at this competition - especially the women who have a hard time consuming the 4,000 to 5,000 calories per day needed as Parker-Simmons informed.
This provoked my curiosity as to what Olympians eat pre and post events. A great article by Bauer in Yahoo Health gives fantastic information on what some of the figure skaters eat. Sarah Hughes pairs lean protein with carbs at meals, like egg whites and oatmeal for breakfast and salmon with a baked potato and vegetables at dinner, as Bauer recommended. Sasha Cohen is known to snack on bran crackers with almond butter and sliced bananas or a meal of veggies and lean meat. Bauer tells us she chooses high-energy foods rich in easily digestible carbs “like 100% juice, whole wheat toast, or a nutrition bar.”. Gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi relied on her mother’s homemade marinara sauce atop of a large plate of spaghetti and a tall glass of milk as a pre-performance meal.
Snowboarder Olympian Hannah Teter, who brought home gold in 2006, definitely did not take part in this McNugget eating-competition with her teammates as she lives on a 100% Vegan diet. “I don’t go to restaurants that don’t serve organic – ever. I cook home most of the time and I enjoy eating super-healthy, pesticide-free food all the time… Everyone’s calling me ‘Hannah Organa’ and I think that’s really funny, because they know I’m full-on,” Teter told Michelle Edelbaum of EatingWell.
Edelbaum also interviewed with speed skater Apolo Ohno, a five-time Olympic medalist, who relies not on Mickey D’s chicken, but homemade coconut chicken curry with brown rice or potatoes as a recovery meal. If he were to win another medal, his celebration dinner would be “the biggest cheat meal of [his] life. It would be a wide array of ethnic foods.” Edelbaum asked if his approach to eating for sports changed in the years he has been competing to which he answered, “I focus on increasing my energy and decreasing my body fat. I’m much more stable. My body is more sensitive to food now. I have spent many years fine-tuning what goes in my body. I know what works best for me and my performance.” I’m sure his body would not have responded well to a McNugget-eating contest.
It was refreshing to come across Catherine Raney’s, a three-time Olympian who holds the record for the U.S. women’s records for the 3,000 and 5,000-meter events, approach to pre-race meals. She keeps it super easy with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich – my kind of meal for the not-so-food-savvy foodie that I am.
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