What a vegan Ironman

March 29, 2007

The Thrive Diet strives to be good for you Vincci Tsui Issue date: 3/27/07 Section: a & e Print Email Article Tools Page 1 of 2 next > While many athletes like to supplement their diets with whey protein powders or raw eggs, Ironman triathlon athlete Brendan Brazier is a bit of an anomaly in his field, as he is a vegan. Now, he wants to teach others how to follow in his footsteps with his new book, The Thrive Diet (Penguin, 2007). In addition to being good for personal health, Brazier believes that the Thrive Diet is also one of the best diets for the environment. The author was in Montreal last Thursday to speak at the Youth Summit on Climate Change."I think

diets that focus on just plants are the most valuable for the environment," said Brazier. "There's some different research: some suggest that local is more important and others suggest that organic is more important. If you pick one or the other, then it's a step in the right direction."The 12-week meal plan is based mostly on recipes developed by Brazier himself. He suggests eating three meals and three snacks a day, as well as making sure to include a smoothie, a large green salad and a homemade energy bar daily. This could be appealing to busy students because the recipes take very little time and skill to prepare; on the flip side, after 12 weeks, this could become monotonous. At times, the book reads like a long advertisement; paragraphs begin discussing the causes of common health problems only to end by declaring that the Thrive Diet has the ability to fix them. The recipes also call for hard-to-find ingredients like hemp, agave nectar, and dulse (a

red seaweed), which can also be hard on students' wallets.Brazier, however, believes that ingredient accessibility should not be a major problem."A lot of those foods are becoming really accessible right now because of the health departments in certain supermarkets. I found that it's actually quite easy to buy those foods now, much more so than just a few years ago," he said. "Cost-wise, they're so nutrient-dense, you don't need to eat as much, so it's actually on par with a standard, healthy diet." Although the cover of the book bills the diet as one that promotes weight loss, Brazier actually developed the diet to enhance his athletic performance. "With a lot of typical vegan diets there are lots of substitutes for meat, like there are tofu hamburgers, hot dogs, soy ice cream and soy milk," Brazier said. "The Thrive Diet doesn't do that. It just uses whole plant-based sources, and it doesn't try to mimic a standard American diet, whereas a lot of

vegetarian or vegan diets I find do."Aside from being vegan, the Thrive Diet is also free of common allergens like corn, wheat (gluten), soy and peanuts. Brazier says that this is to make the diet accessible to a wider audience."I think when people don't have a sensitivity to any one of those allergens, then they're okay to eat them," he said. "But I think a lot of people are in the situation where they just don't know and they'll have headaches, bloating, mild flu-like symptoms and they can't pin it down; quite often it can be attributed to a sensitivity."Parts of the Thrive Diet sound like good ideas to adopt and some of Brazier's research and anecdotes sound very convincing. However, it would probably be very difficult for a student to follow through on the entire 12-week plan; after all, we're not all Ironmen.Peter H

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