Could a vegeterian diet prolong your football career?

This post will look into whether a vegetarian/vegan diet could help to improve our health, fitness and, ultimately, prolong our football playing careers.

I interviewed Andrew Jenkin, an amateur footballer who decided to ‘take the plunge’ and go vegetarian in August, citing the financial implications of eating meat as one of his reasons – a US study found that it is possible to save between 2 and 3 thousand dollars per year by switching to a vegetarian diet.

Many people believe that not eating meat means they won’t get the nutrients they need and their fitness and health will suffer as a result, but Jenkin notes that he plays football 4 times a week and hasn’t missed any health benefits of eating meat whatsoever, instead saying he feels fitter and healthier since switching to the vegetarian diet. These sentiments are echoed by, fully vegan football team, Forest Green Rovers’ nutritionist, Tom Hulin, in Jermaine Jenas BBC documentary, ‘Football Going Vegan’. Hulin notes improvements in the teams fitness, recovery and injury prevention since switching to veganism and also debunks the myth that footballers need lots of protein, saying that this is only really an issue in disciplines such as bodybuilding. However, Rhiannon Lambert does point out, in the same documentary, that in order to get the same amount of nutrients from a vegan/vegetarian diet, we must consume a larger volume of food.

Forest Green Rovers are the worlds first fully vegan football club

Regarding injuries, AS Roma defender Chris Smalling tells us, in ‘Footballers Going Vegan’, that since beginning to cut out red meat and transition towards veganism, the symptoms of his tendonitis – a problem which is not uncommon in amateur football – began to reduce rapidly and eventually disappeared.

Chris Smalling has hailed the benefits of going vegan as a footballer

Andrew Jenkin says he believes his vegetarian diet will play a part in prolonging his football playing career, also mentioning that he has lost weight and improved his mobility across the pitch since switching. When I asked him if he’d ever consider going back to eating meat, the answer was no, with Jenkin saying he hasn’t struggled nearly as much as he thought he would and that vegetarian/vegan dishes are surprisingly nice.

Personally, I’ve been a meat eater all my life and going veggie or vegan had never really appealed to me before, but the evidence shown here is very interesting and I even though I don’t think I’d ever switch to a full vegetarian diet, I will now definitely consider cutting down my meat intake  and introducing more vegetarian dishes into my diet.

So whether you play amateur football, casual 5-a-sides or whatever else, if you’re looking for ways to get fitter or reduce your chances of a bad injury, perhaps a vegeterian or vegan diet could be something for you to consider, even if you’ve never though about it before.

If you'd like to find out more you can watch the aforementioned BBC documentary here.

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