The real food revolution: Feed Zone Portables
The Feed Zone Cookbook was a huge hit, and probably the most popular book in the Canadian Running office over the last couple of years. Feed Zone Portables is a sequel of sorts – a recipe book for endurance athletes with a heavy focus on easy, natural and portable snacks that replace commercial gels and bars. We reached out to Portables co-author and sports physiologist Dr. Allen Lim about what you should take onto the trails.
How did the Feed Zone come into being?
The Feed Zone emerged when I found myself having a hard time connecting my academic knowledge of nutrition to real world practice. When I first began working on the World Cycling Tour it didn’t really matter if I told an athlete what percentage of carbohydrate, fat, and protein to eat if I couldn’t translate that to practical and simple meals. So instead of rifling through periodicals or textbooks, I started learning how to cook myself and to teach the athletes how to cook. Soon after, I met Chef Biju Thomas and he started helping me and the athletes I worked with while we were on the road. That collaboration led to the Feed Zone.
What sort of feedback are you getting from elite athletes that have been using the Portables recipes, particularly runners.
The feedback we’ve been getting from elite athletes, in particular runners, has been overwhelmingly supportive. We’ve given people permission to eat real food instead of deconstructed science and, if anything, it’s given athletes a wider range of possibilities to discover what works for them. A lot of runners complain of gastrointestinal distress on their long runs, especially when they’re limited to pre-packaged foods which are a ubiquitous part of sports nutrition. We get told daily at events or via social media that having alternatives to convenience nutri- tion and taking the time to cook freshly prepared whole foods has solved a lot of these stomach and gut complaints.
Why are energy drinks, gels and bars not necessarily a good option for runners?
Energy drinks aren’t always a good option because they tend to contain too much sugar and excess ingredients that don’t absorb well across the small intestine. If anything, the total number of molecules or osmolality of an energy drink causes water to move from inside the body into the gut to dilute the excess which can lead to bloating, gastrointestinal distress and a greater risk for diarrhea. Gels are similar to energy drinks in that way. Unless they are used with water, they can upset the gut especially if a large quantity is taken in at once. Finally bars, especially pre-packaged bars with a bomb shelter worthy shelf life tend to be really dry and hard to eat.
Without us getting too graphic, why is it that so many runners struggle with GI issues in a race? Will altering one’s diet help avoid this significant problem?
Most runners struggle with GI issues in a race because they feel compelled to consume a lot of sweet, sugary and high- calorie products while racing for the first time without drinking enough water. This overwhelms their gut. More water, more salt, less sugar. Done.
What are your go-to recommendations for long hauls like 100-milers or multi-day events, particularly over tough terrain, where the stomach jostles a lot and the effort is really intense?
I’ll normally advise that they eat what they like. An ultra-endurance run is really stressful on the body. Sitting on the couch isn’t. So I try to get them to imagine if they’d enjoy eating all of their race food while just sitting on the couch. If the answer is no, I ask them why they think that same food would be good under the huge stress of a 100-mile or multi-day running event. Give me a pancake and an omelet. I’d rather run on that than maltodextrin any day.
In the opening pages of your book you talk about the importance of fuelling with fat. Tell us a bit about what sort of training and dietary approaches you suggest to become more efficient at using fat as fuel versus glycogen stores.
A lot of these strategies are pretty extreme. Essentially, you starve yourself of carbs when training to force your body to tap into fat. It’s kind of like a forced march with little food. I can tell you that for the most neurotic of athletes, extremes work pretty well at eliciting these types of adaptations. They’re also good for making athletes immune suppressed and sick. Ultimately, if you train hard and you keep your diet varied with a mix of fat, carbs, protein and beautiful colours from fresh whole food ingredients, you’ll get fitter. Part of that improvement in fitness will undoubtedly be an improvement in fat utilization. So put that butter on your toast and stop worrying about it.
You tackle the big question of “drinking or eating your calories.” In short, what’s your recommendation for runners?
First, it depends on how many calories you actually need. For most runners who are out for less than two hours, not many, if any, calories are needed, so drinking a four per cent carbohydrate or lower drink mix works just fine. That’s four grams of carbohydrate per 100 ml of fluid or 80 calories per 500 ml bottle. For most runners, I recommend eating a big meal a few hours before their run and going without food for their run, but taking an all-natural sports drink that has less sugar and more sodium than your average neon coloured variant. For ultrarunners, the question I like to ask first is whether they think they’ll be burning more calories than they’ll be sweating or if they’ll be sweating more than they’ll be burning calories. This is a really important question because, in the heat, most people will lose more fluid than they will burn calories. In these situations, if you took a look at the total amount of water, salt and energy needed to stay upright and you prioritized the water and salt first, even at a four per cent carbohydrate solution, most runners energy needs would be met. If they aren’t met by drinking, then I’d recommend getting additional calories from simple foods that have a high moisture content and that are easy to eat. A piece of carrot cake probably works better than most energy bars that only have a quarter of the moisture content and are filled with a lot of excess ingredients.
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