The secrets of sport food

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2024

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From the explosion in sport food and drink, to the food diaries and routines of some of the UK’s top athletes, Leyla Kazim investigates food in the world of sport today.

How do elite sport nutritionists prep their athletes and what can we learn from them? What should we eat for energy? What’s the deal with protein? We hear from sport stars in rugby, netball, triathlon and football, to find out.

For an everyday athlete without a performance nutritionist, eating for sport can be confusing. Over a pre workout lunch, sport nutritionist Matt Gardner answers some Food Programme listener questions and shares stories from his days working with elite rugby players and extreme adventurers.

But sport food is no longer just the domain of gym cafes and sport clubs. There has been an explosion of energy drinks and 'hi protein' bars sold anywhere from Post Office counters to the check outs of sport fashion shops. Leyla sends three young food activists, who have been looking into this issue, out onto the streets of Reading to see what they can find on sale. Producer Nina Pullman takes their findings to professor of nutrition and metabolism at the University of Bath, Javier Gonzalez, who looks at the ingredients in more detail.

To explore the bigger links between sport, public health and food marketing, next we drop in on public health policy consultant, Dan Hunt, who explains the appeal of sport from a commercial point of view. Finally, Leyla reflects on how food works as fuel, ahead of the summer of sport to come.

Produced by Nina Pullman for BBC Audio in Bristol.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the
0:03.8	podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.
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0:23.7	And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject
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0:36.1	you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.
0:39.7	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:45.0	So what have we got here?
0:49.0	We've got a Thai green chicken curry, a chickpea and sweet potato curry, roasted chicken, pan-fried
0:56.9	sea trout and then on the side we've got steam rice and seasonal vegetables.
1:02.0	Welcome to the food program with me Leila Kuzim where this week we are exploring the world of food and
1:13.7	sport. You may remember our recent foray into this topic when we had lunch and discussed all
1:21.6	things food with Gary Lininica. If you missed it do look it up it is well worth a listen
1:28.4	but in this episode we're taking a deeper look. What do elite sports stars eat to fuel their top performances?
1:38.0	This is like the base of tennis and paddle in the UK,
1:41.0	so you've got all the top athletes around the UK who come and train here
1:45.4	the likes of Emmeronikhanu, Andy Murray, Katie Bolter.
1:49.5	What can we learn from them as everyday athletes and what if anything should we make of
1:56.8	the plethora of sport food and drinks that are popping up everywhere from post office checkouts to high street sport fashion retailers.
	...

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