Low-carb diets are woefully inadequate for high level athletic activity, which is no doubt why few if any high level athletes follow low-carb diets. However, low-carb armchair theorists insist that low-carb regimens are just fine for serious athletes, despite the fact that controlled studies repeatedly show such diets to cause significant declines in endurance performance.
When you press the low-carb crowd for a real life example of a successful word-class athlete who followed a low-carb diet, one name comes up repeatedly: Mamo Wolde.
Degaga ("Mamo") Wolde (1932 – 2002) was an Ethiopian long distance athlete who won the 1968 Olympic marathon. Do a Google search, and you’ll find Wolde incessantly cited on low-carb websites and forums as proof that low-carb diets are great for serious athletes.
And how exactly did all these folks arrive at the belief that Wolde’s victory at the ’68 games was fueled by a low-carb diet? The source responsible is an article penned by British author Barry Groves, whose website is purportedly devoted to “Exposing dietary misinformation”.
This is what Groves has to say about Wolde’s victory in Mexico City:
“Now let's look at a real athlete
It was 1968 at the Mexico City Olympic Games. The spectators at the marathon went wild as a relatively unknown Ethiopian, Mamo Wolde, won the marathon. Not only was the thirty-six-year-old runner the oldest man ever to win this prestigious event, he did it in a time that has not been bettered to this day [According to this list, Wolde’s time was not a record and has been beaten at every Summer Olympics since].
So what was Wolde's secret?
Wolde grew up in an Ethiopian village. His life consisted of running after and hunting wild game on foot. His diet was one high in animal meat and fat, with practically no carbohydrate. Subsequent tests showed that Wolde's body, under conditions of physical load, readily burned fat as its main energy source. Wolde had no concept of 'hitting the wall'. It had never happened to him.”
I have searched high and low to find evidence of Mamo Wolde’s dietary habits during his competitive years, and have found nothing. If Groves has such evidence, he’s not sharing it with his readers. If anyone can confirm Wolde’s eating habits with something of more substance than unfounded conjecture on low-carb websites, I’d love to see it. Just because someone grew up in East Africa and hunted wild game at some point in their life, does not automatically mean they ate like a Masai warrior during their athletic career.
The only evidence Groves appears to cite in support of Wolde's alleged low-carb ways is a study from a 1994 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise that had absolutely nothing to do with Mamo Wolde nor with low-carb diets[1]. This study in fact involved six American male collegiate runners whose endurance was tested on three different diets. The amount of fat used for fuel during exercise and time to exhaustion was reportedly increased on the "high-fat" diet. What Groves doesn't mention is that the composition of said diet was 12% protein, 38% fat, and 50% carbohydrate - hardly the high-fat ketogenic affair he claims, without evidence, that Wolde followed!
This isn’t the first time Groves has cited research that does not say what he claims it does. Back in 2005, when I committed the heinous crime of truthfully stating that calories, not macronutrient ratios, were the final arbiter of fat-derived weight loss, I was besieged by smug low-carbers citing the following passage from Groves’ website:
"'On a high-fat diet, 4703 to 8471 excess calories were required for each kilogram of added weight. On a low fat VLCD [very low calorie diet], replacing fat calories with 8g/day of equivalent carbohydrate calories reduced weight loss by 1.68kg, corresponding to 3300 calories of carbohydrate/kilogram, possibly 2500 calories per kilogram for carbohydrate alone.'"
Groves then went on to claim that these figures demonstrate a significantly higher amount of calories is required from dietary fat than from carbohydrates to induce the deposition of body fat.
Unlike the cultish followers of the low-carb religion that incessantly quoted this passage all over the Internet, I actually read the paper it was allegedly taken from (Groves referenced it to a 1975 NIH publication titled Obesity in Perspective).
The paper did not contain that quote, and the study in that paper dealt with experimental weight gain, not weight loss! I emailed Groves about this, who subsequently removed the quote from his website. He explained he himself put that quote together - he had taken the weight gain/calorie intake data from the NIH paper, and some fat loss/calorie intake data from a paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Needless to say, mixing and matching data from two entirely different studies to create a custom-made quote that supports a pre-conceived conclusion is hardly sound science. If you want to compare the weight loss/gain effects of high versus low carb diets, you do it in the same study among a single sample, the members of which have been randomized to either a high or low carb diet. As I explain in The Fat Loss Bible , when this has been done under tightly controlled metabolic ward conditions, there is no statistically significant difference in fat-derived weight loss between high- and low-carb groups eating the same amount of calories.
What Elite East African Long Distance Runners Really Eat
Right below Ethiopa in East Africa sits Kenya, another nation known for churning out world class runners. A number of studies have been published detailing just what these elite athletes eat – and it sure as heck isn’t a 100% meat, zero-carb diet.
Mukeshi and Thairu examined the food intake of male Kenyan runners, for two days a week over a 3-month period, and found they consumed an average of 441 grams of carbohydrate daily (8.1 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of bodyweight, approximately 75% of total caloric intake)[2].
Christensen et al studied adolescent Kenyan runners from the distinct ethnic group known as the Kalenjin. This group, hailing from the Great Rift Valley, produced a staggering 40% of winners of all major international middle- and long-distance running competitions between 1987-1997. The total mean daily carbohydrate intake of the adolescent runners was 476 grams (8.7 g/kg, 71% of total calories). Total intake of protein and fat was 88 and 45 grams, respectively[3].
The most recent study to look at the dietary habits of Kenyan runners also involved Kilenjin athletes. Researchers observed them during a training camp in the North Rift Valley, and found they ate three meals and 2 snacks daily. The staple foods were bread, boiled rice, boiled potatoes, porridge, cabbage, kidney beans, and a thick maize meal paste known as ugali. Meat (mainly beef) was served at the training camp 4 times per week, although the athletes were able to access more meat when at home. Generous amounts of tea (with milk) were consumed throughout the day.
When their intake data was tallied up, it was found that mean daily carbohydrate was 607 grams (10.4 g/kg, 76.5% of calories). Daily protein and fat intakes were 75 and 45 grams, respectively[4].
Conclusion
Any claim that elite East African runners shatter world records whilst eating nothing but meat and fat is utter nonsense. Yet again, we see how the low-carb movement pumps out more bollocks than a room full of politicians. If you are a highly active individual, learn to love your carbohydrates because they are critical for supporting the high volume training necessary to achieve peak fitness and sporting proficiency.
References
1. Muoio DM, et al. Effect of dietary fat on metabolic adjustments to maximal VO-2 and endurance in runners. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 1994; 26 (1): 81-88.
2. Mukeshi M, Thairu K. Nutrition and body build: a Kenyan review. World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics, 1993; 72: 218-226.
3. Christensen DL, et al. Food and macronutrient intake of male adolescent Kalenjin runners in Kenya. British Journal of Nutrition, 2002; 88 (6): 711-717.
http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FBJN88_06%2FS0007114502002465a.pdf&code=14cf1062617bfa3de5fb4dfe7e2a40f0
4. Onywera VO, et al. Food and Macronutrient Intake of EliteKenyan Distance Runners. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 2004; 14: 709-719.
http://www.ku.ac.ke/images/stories/docs/publications/enviromental_human/Food-and-Macronutrient-Intake.pdf
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