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Why Do So Many Triathletes Collapse Just Before the Finish Line?

mmirhashem — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Jonny Brownlee, the 26-year-old British triathlete and Rio Olympic silver medalist, was leading the International Triathlon Union’s Grand Final in Cozumel, Mexico, last week with just over 400 yards��to go when he first showed signs of trouble. He swerved wide through a corner. His upper body leaned back and his strides turned choppy. His pace slowed. He weaved, winced, and suddenly lurched to the side of the road, his head lolling like a newborn’s.
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His older brother, Alistair Brownlee, the Olympic champion who was running in third place, then came up from behind and pulled and carried Jonny across the finish line, where he immediately collapsed.

Triathlon has a history of epic last-mile implosions, especially at the Ironman World Championship, held each October in Kona on the big island of Hawaii. There’s in 1982, in 1995, in 1997, and, most excruciatingly, the 1997 crawling duel between . In fact, just a few weeks ago, American triathlete short of the finish line at the Paralympics in Rio.
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It’s not uncommon to see athletes collapse in exhaustion right after the race, but to do so just before the finish, particularly with victory on the line, is a sign that something in the body has gone truly wrong. So what is happening to these triathletes who suffer spectacular finish line failures?
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Brent Ruby, an exercise physiologist at the University of Montana, has a clear diagnosis as soon as he watches the video of Brownlee and checks the race day weather in Cozumel��(86 degrees and 82 percent humidity). “It has nothing to do with fuel. It has nothing to do with his lactate being too high. It has everything to do with overheating,” he says.

For years, Ruby has studied the toll that extreme heat��can take on the human body. As a professor at the Montana Center for Work Physiology and Exercise Metabolism, he has tracked the link between body temperature and performance in wildland firefighters, ultra-distance runners, and triathletes. He’s also competed in numerous triathlons, including two trips to the lava-lined sauna that is the Ironman World Championship. “I remember being at mile nine [of the run] in 2010 and thinking, ‘Shit, I'm already overheating,’” he says. “It was just a nightmare the whole rest of the race.”

“It has nothing to do with fuel. It has nothing to do with his lactate being too high. It has everything to do with overheating.”

Humans, with our general lack of body hair and abundant sweat glands, have evolved to stay cool. Some scientists have suggested that our ability to dissipate heat might have even enabled early humans to . But these adaptations can be short-circuited by a combination of weather and intense exercise.

In drastic situations, when the body temperature spikes above 105 degrees for a half hour or more, the organs can literally start to cook, says Robert Huggins, vice president of research at the University of Connecticut’s Korey Stringer Institute, which studies sudden death in athletes and promotes ways to prevent it. Stay too hot for too long, and you can . The weaving and staggering you see in athletes like Brownlee is an overheated brain shutting the body down to try to stop the heat buildup.
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Often the problem is blamed on poor hydration; after the Cozumel incident note that he was treated for dehydration after the race. But while a lack of fluids can compound the problem by decreasing the liquid available for sweating—and thus cooling—“[it] is a huge misnomer that if I drink copious amounts of fluids I won't get heat stroke,” Huggins says. “You could be completely hydrated and still [suffer heat stroke].”
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And perhaps counterintuitively, the talent of an elite athlete puts him or her at a higher risk of a finish-line collapse, says Chad Asplund, a triathlete and the director of athletic medicine at Georgia Southern University. He points to what some scientists have called the “central governor theory.” That is, the brain acts as a brake to keep the body from overworking itself, and mere mortals, upon receiving these signals, usually slow or stop before disaster. But Asplund, who has spent part of his career studying what makes athletes collapse, says that elites have learned to silence the alarm bells. “Elite athletes have gotten to where they are because they can manage or control a lot of body indicators that would tell you or me, ‘Hey, slow down dummy.’”
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There are some quirks that make triathletes vulnerable to overheating, says Asplund. The water during the swim and wind of the bike can help keep athletes cool, but, with their internal engine revved up, the final blitzing 10K��or marathon run, where there’s not enough breeze to help cool the athlete, pushes them over the edge. That said, Huggins notes that this is not a triathlon-specific phenomenon. The most common cause of heat stroke among athletes is simply running intensely, often over short distances, in hot weather. This is because the shorter duration incentivizes athletes to go all-out, pushing their temperatures into the red zone.��

“You could be completely hydrated and still suffer heat stroke.”

In fact, the most dramatic cases of heat stroke Huggins has seen are at the relatively short Falmouth Road Race, a legendary seven-mile running race along the shores of Cape Cod held on the third Sunday each August. The conditions there nearly killed marathon great Alberto Salazaar, who in 1978 was given last rites when he collapsed after the finish line. Now, Huggins and his crew from the institute have 40 tubs of ice water stationed at the finish, where they both study the runners and serve as the volunteer medical team. Last year was the worst he’s seen, with more than 100 people needing treatment for overheating, including 34 cases of heat stroke.

While an Ironman is certainly longer than seven miles, the prevalence of finish line collapses in Kona is likely due to the combination of speed—the fastest runners are finishing their marathon at or below three hours—and the fact that the race is commonly held in 90-degree temperatures.
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In contrast, Ruby has studied racers at the notorious Badwater 135 in Death Valley, California—where temperatures can hover around 120 degrees—and saw little sign of overheating. At the finish line, “those guys just seem sore,” he says. “They were not completely undone like you see in some of these shorter events and even in Ironman. And that’s because the pace of the activity is so slow.”
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So what’s an athlete to do when getting ready for a fast run in hot weather? During a sweltering race, be sure to stay hydrated, as that facilitates sweating, and don’t ignore those alarm bells. Cooling off with ice in a bandana or a wet hat can help, but if you or someone near you starts getting dizzy, staggering, or slurring words, it’s probably time for a swift trip to the ice bath. It’s critical to cool someone suffering heat stroke within 30 minutes, Huggins says.��

But the best way to avoid getting to this stage in the first place is to prepare ahead of time—that is, try to slowly acclimate to the heat in training. With a week or two of workouts in sweltering conditions, the amount of fluid in the blood can go up, resting body temperature can go down, and one begins sweating more easily. Heat acclimation can be uncomfortable and potentially dangerous, but if done right, it could save you from a spectacular finish line collapse.��

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Niche Sports and the Doping You Don’t Hear About

eberger — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This January, at the center of a Las Vegas arena, Anderson Silva secured his legacy as one of the best mixed-martial artists in history. The 40-year-old Brazilian fighter battered his opponent in five rounds of hooks, jabs, and kicks in a fight put on by the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

But four days later, the Nevada Athletic Commission announced that the fighter had tested positive for the steroid drostanolone in the run-up to the fight. It was a body blow to a sport long troubled by rumors of doping. Not only that, but Silva’s opponent in that fight, Nick Diaz, also allegedly tested positive for marijuana in a post-fight test.

As drug scandals buffet marquee sports like pro cycling, track, and Major League Baseball, relatively low-profile, low-budget niche sports are trying to navigate the same treacherous waters.��While cage fighting shares few things in common with ultramarathon running, obstacle course racing, CrossFit or mountaineering, there is one important common denominator: each sport is wrestling with the potential for doping—and the public-relations damage that comes with it. It’s also becoming more apparent that it doesn’t take the lure of Olympic gold or a seven-figure contract to make athletes cross the line.

Not only that, but as doping has grown increasingly sophisticated, anti-doping efforts have been forced to become more comprehensive. Confessional memoirs and legal documents surrounding the Lance Armstrong affair revealed a bag of tricks. Athletes hid from drug testers, took tiny doses of steroids that flushed from their bodies in hours, and used hard-to-detect blood transfusions or custom-made drugs not on the testing list. Two pro cyclists this year were busted for allegedly that hasn’t reached the market yet. New allegations of , leveled by an independent commission for the World Anti-Doping Agency, underscores the challenges facing doping police.

That puts smaller sports, many without deep pockets, in a tough spot. Do you go all in to address a problem that might not be there? Do you test just at competitions, speak out against doping and hope this inoculates you from a scandal? Or do you carry on with business as usual.

“If more people want to see testing and want a clean sport, then it will force the hands of the race directors,” says Ian Torrence. “But I don’t know if people care.”

The responses to possible drug abuse are as varied as the sports. A few of these niche sports have robust, year-around drug-testing. Others test only at competitions, an approach so vulnerable to abuse that it’s hardly better than not testing at all. Often, the difference comes down to how much the organizations behind the sport are willing or able to spend.��“Some of these fringe sports might not have enough money to spend thousands of dollars testing at every event,” says Daniel Eichner, the former science director at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, who now runs one of two U.S. drug testing labs certified by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

“The question with these new sports is what are they trying to accomplish?” says Dr. Michael Joyner, an expert in human performance at the Mayo Clinic, who helped with a recent about gaps in drug testing by the investigative website ProPublica. “Are they trying to let this not be a pharmaceutical arms race, or are they involved in some sort of brand protection?”

Eichner points to UFC as a surprising bright spot. Soon after the doping allegations against Silva surfaced, the Las Vegas-based company announced plans for an ambitious new drug-testing program. In April they hired one of the country’s best-known anti-doping cops to build and run it. Jeff Novitzky was a federal agent who made headlines for the investigation that ensnared Olympic sprinter Marion Jones in what became known as the BALCO scandal. He was also a central player in doping investigations of Lance Armstrong and several top Major League Baseball players.��Today, Novitzky sounds like a missionary: “I truly, based in my experience, believe we have the most comprehensive, robust anti-doping program in all sports in all the world.”

He ticks off a list of features to back up such a bold claim: The drug testing and decisions about penalties will be handled by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, shielding it from potential meddling by UFC promoters. Athletes will be subject to year-around “surprise” testing, to guard against people doping during training, but not right before fights. Testers will use a “biological passport,” much like pro cycling, that looks for telltale fluctuations in body chemistry to highlight hard-to-detect doping. Sentences will be more severe, starting with two-year bans. The effort will cost millions, and could reveal some unpleasant news, Novitzky says.

In the arena of fitness competitions, CrossFit is the big brand. The CrossFit Games feature a prize purse topping $2 million. And with that have come warnings that the sport is ripe for problems. Asked about doping in a , top CrossFit athlete Dan Bailey says, “Our testing procedure could and should be improved. I think as the sport gets more popular, the purses get bigger, sponsorships get bigger. Because the incentive is just there, and nobody's perfect. People are going to dive into that, I'm sure, at some point.”

CrossFit has responded with a testing program featuring some of the same strategies as the UFC. Some CrossFit Games participants are tested at competitions, and in recent years the company started out-of-competition testing. It’s not clear how much advance warning athletes get for these tests. The CrossFit guidebook notes people might be notified ahead of time by text or e-mail. Bailey, in , says he was given 24-hours notice. Drug testing experts say immediate, unannounced tests are most effective, because it’s harder for athletes to dodge a tester or let drugs flush from their bodies.

The testing has tripped up several CrossFit athletes. Most recently, in July the company announced sanctions against four athletes. Two tested positive for steroids during competitions, one was sanctioned for skipping an out of competition test, and another had a positive steroid test blamed on a tainted supplement.��

It’s also not clear what drugs CrossFit is testing for. The company’s guidelines to athletes say only that it “may” test for a long list. CrossFit doesn’t mention a biological passport. A CrossFit spokesman declined to discuss the program.

Eichner says he isn’t familiar with CrossFit’s operation. But when he sees the athletes in fitness competitions or extreme obstacle-course races on television, alarm bells sometimes go off. “I’ve been in this business for a while and I can look at these people and know if they’ve got a problem.” he says.

“When you start to introduce large prize purses,” says��Adrian��Bijanada,��“some athletes��may view it as tempting enough to do something that is unethical.”

Far from the realm of muscle-bound gladiators, ultra-distance running faces a similar quandary. As traditional track and field is wracked by , and claims that the governing authority is , and cover-ups in Russia, some wonder whether the small world of ultrarunners should step up its efforts. The sport has already shown it’s not immune. Several top runners in South Africa’s 56-mile�� Comrades Marathon have tested positive, .��Today, the approach to drug testing is “all over the map,” says��Ian Torrence, an ultra-distance running coach and race organizer in Flagstaff, Arizona, who for the ultrarunning website iRunFar.com.

The International Association of Ultrarunners, which oversees world championships and sanctions some other ultra-distance races, has drug testing at events, and out-of-competition tests for top performers. But at many of the independent races, it’s up to the individual organizer. It can be an expensive headache for races that often barely break even, Torrence says.��“If more people want to see testing and want a clean sport, then it will force the hands of the race directors,” he says. “But I don’t know if people care.”

Ultrarunning isn’t alone. The OCR World Championships, a fledgling obstacle course race in the genre that includes popular series such as Tough Mudder, was the first of its kind to drug test at its 2014 race in Cleveland, Ohio.��“When you start to introduce large prize purses, you are unfortunately are going to get some athletes who may view it as tempting enough to do something that is unethical,” says Adrian Bijanada, the race organizer.��He acknowledged testing at the event wouldn’t catch people cheating other times of the year. But he hopes it’s a first step toward more frequent testing of top athletes at other competitive obstacle course events.

Meanwhile, elite mountaineering has taken a very different approach. As climbers chase ever-faster speed records, and the publicity and sponsorship dollars that come with them, doping could offer an edge. Faced with a strong libertarian streak and the logistics of drug-testing on remote mountains, the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation is telling alpine climbers to let their conscience be their guide.��“For most people any ‘rules’ would be unenforceable and have to be a personal decision. The underlying principle must be honesty with oneself and honesty with one’s peers,” the federation’s medical commission wrote in a .

It’s a striking departure from the increasingly invasive measures in some sports.��Mountaineering has a long history of using supplements to boost performance. Bottled oxygen is the most obvious example. Talk of everything from EPO to steroids has circulated in the climbing world. (See “Climbing’s Little Helper”)��The laissez-faire strategy makes sense given mountaineering’s free-spirited, individualist culture, say Chris Weidner, a climbing guide and journalist who has written about drug testing for climbers. When it comes to concerns about cheating, doping ranks well below proving that someone actually summited.

The conclusion to all this is that even niche sports are going to have to contend with increasing concerns about doping. But without large regulatory bodies setting standards and controlling the process, people wanting to know what’s being done to keep their favorite sport clean will need to read the fine print.��

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Yes, Quiksilver Is Going Under. But Surfing’s Doing Just Fine.

eberger — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a long fall for Quiksilver from the heady days of the 1990s and early 2000s, when the Australian-born brand rode a tidal wave of popularity in surfwear among people who had never set foot on a board.��

The iconic brand—founded in 1969, now based in Huntington Beach, California—became the first publically-traded surfwear company in 1986.��Earlier this week it was trading below��50 cents, and was suspended from��the New York Stock Exchange. On Wednesday, the company ��that it’s declaring bankruptcy, and that the Los Angeles-based investment firm Oaktree Capital Management will gain a majority stake in the business as part of its turn-around effort. ��

The company and its chief brands—Quiksilver, Roxy women’s wear, and DC shoes—will continue operating. But store closures are expected, continuing a pattern of contractions that began two years ago as the company tried to stem mounting financial losses. (The bankruptcy doesn’t affect the company’s European or Asia-Pacific units.)��

Before the wipeout, this was the dream: Board shorts and T-shirts emblazoned with surf-brand logos would be a lasting trend. But fashion-fickle youth have shifted away from the look, says Mitch Kummetz, a senior analyst at the investment bank B. Riley & Co., who has followed the Quicksilver Company since 1998. In women’s wear, cheaper “fast fashion” has gained marketshare in the wake of the recession. More traditional sportswear from companies like Under Armor has also grown more popular, he says.��

Key retailers��were put off by strategies like direct sales to customers that would bypass surf and skate shops, says Kummetz. They also cut back on spending on competitions and athlete sponsorships.

The number of Americans actually surfing doesn’t appear to have changed much. Participation has grown from 2.2 million in 2007 to 2.7��million in��2013, according to studies by the Outdoor Foundation, a non-profit arm of the outdoor industry. But this could be beside the point, since many of the people buying into the look aren’t actually picking up a board, says Kummetz.

That shift in cultural currents was compounded by a series of business missteps. The biggest was the company’s ill-fated foray into winter sports. In 2005, Quiksilver bought the Rossignol company, which included Rossignol, Dynastar, Look, and Lange brands. It ��three years later for $147 million, less than half of what it paid.

That failed deal eventually cost the company nearly $1.3 billion and “left us with a huge amount of debt,” according to a letter from Quiksilver CEO Pierre Agnes and President Greg Healy to U.S. employees explaining the bankruptcy.

The two also wrote the problems were compounded by “poor management decisions that yielded a failed strategy and poor operational execution.”��

In the wake of the Rossignol debacle, the company in 2013 brought in former Disney and Nike executive Andy Mooney to serve as CEO. But under his tenure Quiksilver alienated key retailers, who were put off by strategies like direct sales to customers that would bypass surf and skate shops, says Kummetz. They also cut back on spending on competitions and athlete sponsorships, he says. Kelly Slater, a surfing legend and longtime Quiksilver mascot, left in 2014 to start his own line of clothing. Other companies were quick to pounce on the dissatisfaction.

“They did not pull punches in going to retailers and saying, ‘These guys are not “core”��anymore. We're “core,” ’ ”��Kummetz says.

Mooney was replaced earlier this year.

It’s not clear how the bankruptcy will spill over into the sport. The company is the title sponsor of several stops on the World Surf League’s Championship Tour, and lists 24 men and 9��women sponsored by Quiksilver and Roxy.��

Surf League spokesman Dave Prodan declined to discuss any detailed conversations with Quiksilver about future sponsorship, but says “all the events that have support at the moment we've been assured have support moving ahead.” A source close to the company says Quiksilver plans to continue sponsoring athletes and events, but it’s not clear at what level.

Despite the grim news, the two company leaders struck an upbeat note about the company’s future in their letter to employees.��

“Our reorganization will provide the opportunity for a fresh start, and while there is much work to be done, we are confident Quiksilver is moving in the right direction and will emerge a stronger business, better positioned to grow and prosper into the future,” they wrote.��

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This Is How You Set a Surfer on Fire. Safely, of Course.

eberger — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes fire and water do mix.��

Such was the case last week when Hawaii-born surfer ��steered his board through the gullet of an enormous wave at ��off the island of Tahiti as flames poured from his back. —proposed by one of his Instagram followers—was sponsored by Red Bull and took a full year of prep to get just right.

“Obviously this had never been done. So we had to go to the drawing board to figure out what we had to do to get this whole thing started,” says experienced stuntman , 26, who oversaw the details. “There’s so much involved with being in the ocean and the waves and weather and spray.”

Harper, who’s set himself on fire more than a dozen times for movies and television, went with a layered approach to shield O’Brien from the intense heat. First came two layers of fire-retardant fabric next to his skin. That fabric was soaked in flame-resistant gel, then chilled to be ice cold and stored in a cooler until the last minute.��

“Obviously this had never been done. We had to go to the drawing board to figure out what we had to do to get this whole thing started.”

Next came a specially designed wetsuit with foam panels built into the chest and upper back to help O’Brien float while weighed down with all the extra clothing (15 pounds of gear in total). The last layer was another fire��retardant top and bottom. For added protection, O’Brien donned a hoodie and gloves that were covered in a fireproof gel. His face was��smeared with the same substance.

Then came the secret sauce: the stunt crew spread a custom-made combination of flammable goo and liquid on O’Brien’s back. Harper guards the recipe, but said he devised a special version to withstand the wind and water.��“We wanted it to look big and gnarly. That was our biggest issue that we sorted out,” he says.

(Tim McKenna/Red Bull Content Poo)

The team went through several test runs in California and Tahiti to make sure O’Brien was comfortable and to work out all��technical kinks. In the end, the only snafu happened when O’Brien lost part of an eyebrow on a trial run��after the water washed off some of the protective gel and a flame whipped around as he surfed. (It’s called getting “licked” in stunt parlance, and it��“kind of comes with the territory,” Harper says.)

Harper, a lifelong surfer who’d toyed with the idea of a flaming surf stunt long before Red Bull came calling, says he’s thinking about re-enacting his own version in California. He’ll just have to find the right wave. He’s comfortable with the fire part, but says he admires O’Brien’s skill in the water.��“If you saw these waves in person it would just blow your mind,” he says.

Red Bull will post a complete behind-the-scenes account of the stunt on August��7 on the��.

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The Ironman Lottery Is Dead. Up Next: Your Local Race?

mpayant — Mon, 18 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

For triathletes who aren’t the world’s best, but still dream of racing in the storied , there’s always been a tantalizing shortcut to the shores of Kona, Hawaii.��Cough up some money,��get your name in a lottery, and cross your fingers that you’ll win one of a handful of entries.

The race’s owners have billed it as a way for the everyman and woman��to tread the same path as the sport’s legends. Triathletes have alternately welcomed it as a lifeline or derided it as an un-earned honor. Now, the U.S. Justice Department has another name for it: illegal gambling.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa, Florida,�� Wednesday that it had reached an agreement with the , the Florida-based owner of Ironman races, over allegations that the entry system violated a Florida state ban on lotteries and a federal anti-gambling law. Under the deal, WTC doesn’t admit to any wrongdoing, but must forfeit $2.76 million to the feds—the money it earned from lotteries over the last three years.

The case forces Ironman to look for another way to leave the Kona door open to middle-of-the-pack amateurs. And it raises questions about whether the increasingly common lotteries used to dole out entries to everything from marathons to mountain bike races might run afoul of the law. The good news is most lottery-based races shouldn't have to change a thing. Ironman was singled out for a series of complex factors—from how the lottery earnings were spent to when athletes were charged—that��don't apply to many other endurance events.��

In��, federal prosecutors argued the Ironman lottery crossed the line because the Florida constitution prohibits lotteries. That��in turn broke a federal law that prohibits gambling in a state if it’s outlawed there, according to prosecutors. Lottery and gambling laws vary widely by state and��are extremely complicated. While , for example, in a twist of the law, .��

Also, prosecutors zeroed in on Ironman’s use of the lottery as a moneymaker. For the 2015 race, people paid $50 to get into the lottery, and another $50 to increase their odds of snatching one of the 100 lottery slots available.��All told, Ironman earned $1 million from the lotteries that year, according to prosecutors. Other events, like��Colorado’s��, use lottery entry fees to raise money for charity rather than for profit. Or, in the case of the Western States Endurance Run, they only��charge athletes an entry fee if they are picked in the lottery.��

“I wondered how long it would be before I got a phone call,” said Josh Colley, director of the Leadville series. “Now that I have, probably the next phone call I'll make is to our headquarters asking where do we stand.”

His organization, owned by the Minnesota-based company , has a lottery to determine who gets many of the coveted slots into its high-altitude Leadville 100 trail ultrarun and mountain bike races.��The events use the lottery because it seems like a fair way to distribute entries, Colley says. He’s put off by the mad online stampede for limited slots at some popular endurance events. The Leadville lottery has the side benefit of raising money for charity. The $15 fee to enter the lottery is channeled to the local Leadville Legacy Foundation and a Life Time charity, totaling approximately $50,000 in a year.

A Life Time spokeswoman said in light of the legal settlement, “we are reviewing our current procedures to ensure compliance.”

Despite the similarities, details of the Ironman case suggest Leadville—and a number of other races—could be in the clear. ��

Unlike Ironman or Leadville, a number of races require a small fee, or charge nothing unless a lottery entrant gets a spot in the race. That’s true for the ,��major marathons including New York City,��and the in Atlanta, Georgia. With 60,000 runners, it’s the world’s biggest 10K, and the largest running race of any kind in the U.S.��

The Ironman case “has no implications at all” for the Peachtree lottery, said race director Rich Kenah. He’s heard of other races using the lottery as a way to make money, but said he didn’t know which ones.

Asked whether the Justice Department is looking at other events, , spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Florida, wrote that “we do not comment regarding ongoing investigations, or whether, in fact, there are ongoing investigations.”

It’s not clear exactly what sparked the investigation into Ironman. Talk has swirled on��triathlon forums��about whether it was triggered by a letter sent to the Justice Department by athletes critical of some of the company’s practices. Daniels, however, said his office was aware of the lottery issue independently, and that the critics’ “purported actions had nothing to do with our investigation.”

But there is one tantalizing detail: one of the prosecutors on the case, James Muench, is intimately familiar with Ironman’s operation. He’s competed in eight Ironman triathlons, according to Daniels.

Ironman, meanwhile, said it would announce new plans later in the year. Lottery winners for the 2015 race will still get to line up in Kona this October. The its previous lottery was above-board. But it said in a written statement that it chose to settle the case in order to stay focused on athletes and its events.��

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The Recovery Market Has a Fake Food Problem

eberesini — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

If McDonald’s is looking for a way out of its image as , Brent Ruby might have a suggestion: The Happy Sports Recovery Meal.

Take a plain burger and medium Coke. Yes, you can have fries with that. Then advertise that the meal works just as well for recovery��as fancy fitness food. As an added benefit, the marketing would actually be backed by science.

Ruby, a runner, former Ironman triathlete, and University of Montana exercise physiologist, is the brains behind in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism that shows no discernible performance difference between tearing into a recovery PowerBar��and ending your workout at the Golden Arches.��For a man who clearly relishes playing the iconoclast, the results were sweet confirmation of what he long suspected.

“There’s nothing overly magical about any of the sport nutrition products except that they are marketed very well,” Ruby says. “I've always kicked around this idea that regular food is just as good. It’s just nobody has used it for glycogen studies.”

To put his hunch to the test, Ruby took 11 guys and put them through the ringer. Each rode a stationary bike for 90 minutes, to the brink of exhaustion. Immediately after the workout, they ate either the of hotcakes, hashbrowns, and a small orange juice,��or the sports food:��Gatorade, Clif Shot Blocks, and Clif Bar's Kit's Organic PB bars. Then they had a second snack two hours later of either of a burger, Coke, and fries, or Cytomax, PowerBar Recovery drink, and PowerBar Energy Chews. Meanwhile, Ruby sampled their blood and took slivers of muscle from their thighs to see how much glycogen—the key muscle fuel during intense exercise—was in the tissue. Finally, they climbed back onto the bike four hours after the first workout and rode as hard as they could for 20 kilometers. A week later, each person returned to repeat the process, this time eating the food they hadn't tried before.

The results were clear. Blood glucose and insulin response—a gauge of how the body responds to food—were the same. The amount of glycogen replenished in the muscles was the same. Performances in the 20K time trial were almost identical.

For Ruby, it’s a satisfying debunking of food snobbery crossed with hype. He said he heard from colleagues who cringed at the idea of McDonald’s as recovery food. “The fact that I'm creating this controversy with my colleagues, I love it.”

“There’s nothing overly magical about any of the sport nutrition products except that they are marketed very well,” Ruby says. “I've always kicked around this idea that regular food is just as good. It’s just nobody has used it for glycogen studies.”

isn’t horrified by Ruby’s findings, but cautions that it doesn't present��the whole picture. Sims, an exercise physiologist and nutritionist affiliated with Stanford University and a founder of the sports hydration company Osmo, says she’s a big proponent of real food versus “engineered” sports food. But the new study’s focus on glycogen replacement overlooks other components to recovery, she says. Additives and preservatives in fast food could cause problems in ways that don’t show up in the study. She also emphasizes a more protein-heavy meal right after a workout (20 to 25 grams for men, up to 30 grams for women) to help reduce inflammation and rebuild damaged muscles.

“For a one-off, fast food isn’t that detrimental,” says Sims, who has made headlines for critiquing many sports drink products as ineffective. “But if your go-to recovery food is processed and refined stuff, then it becomes an impact on recovery and health.”

It’s worth noting that many packaged sports foods also fall into that “processed and refined” category. For that reason, Sims advocates eating real food for recovery as much as possible. Think: yogurt, or��a turkey sandwich.��The engineered sports food phenomenon is a very American thing, she says. In Europe, for example, she doesn't see many��PowerBars or��other packaged sports foods for sale. When people are hungry—including athletes—they’ll eat a sandwich rather than a bar.

Ruby says he doesn’t mean athletes should head to the nearest burger joint and pig out. In his study, he chose items from the McDonald’s menu that met some basic recovery��guidelines: mostly carbs, a little protein, and enough fat so that his test subjects would eat a similar amount of calories to those eaten in comparable recovery meal studies, or about 1,300 calories.

The new findings are part of a broader movement in sports nutrition toward real��food. Think of it as the low-brow version of the —the decidedly more gourmet tome by physiologist Allen Lim and Biju Thomas, formerly a chef for the pro cycling teams.

For Ruby, the key to a healthy recovery meal for athletes is to keep things varied and interesting, listen to what your body is craving, and don’t feel ashamed if that involves a trip through the drive-through. For him, sometimes it’s a Snickers bar, other days, a lamb burger at one of his favorite restaurants. “There is not,” he says, “one single recovery diet that is optimal all the time.”

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To Eliminate Dopers: Is a Lie Detector Test the Answer?

sperkins-pom — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

When placed second in the 2009 Ironman Austria, he heard the whispers. In an era wracked by doping scandals, people raised their eyebrows at his meteoric rise from obscurity. To some, the performance just seemed too good to be true.

The Aussie pro could do little more than insist he was clean, credit a grueling training regimen, and take the usual doping tests. The problem is, that’s what Lance Armstrong did for years before his Oprah confession. And look what that proved.

Now, on the eve of the world’s premier triathlon, Saturday’s Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, Cunnama is taking part in the Clean Protocol, a new effort to certify pro athletes as clean. If successful, the program will reassure wary fans, sponsors, and fellow athletes that they can really believe in extraordinary performances. For athletes under the microscope, it promises a way to answer the maddening challenge to prove a negative—that they haven’t doped.

[quote]It begs the question: Is this a quixotic misadventure or an ingenious example of thinking outside the box?[/quote]

The program has already won support from a handful of prominent triathletes at Kona, including Cunnama and his girlfriend, . All told, seven athletes—Cunnama, Swallow, TJ Tollakson, Andrew Starykowicz, Luke McKenzie, Harry Wiltshire, and Daniel Halksworth—have been certified as of Friday morning. More��could join��the list after another day of��screening. And Alex Bok announced he will require the athletes on his , a combination of pros and elite amateurs, to take part.

“This is a method perhaps of proving that I’m clean,” said the 31-year-old, who finished fourth at Kona last year, and is a favorite for a top place again.��“I don’t know if it’s the solution to doping and anti-doping. But it’s worth a try.”

But the fledgling program faces major challenges at its unveiling. Ironman organizers and the World Anti-Doping Agency have both distanced themselves from it. There are questions about the science underlying the tests. Anti-doping agencies wield armies of testers, advanced laboratories, and low rates of false positives. Clean Protocol is really a handful of passionate people on a mission. It begs the question: Is this a quixotic crusade or an ingenious example of thinking outside the box?

Instead of unmasking the bad guys, Clean Protocol will publicize the clean ones. Think of it like the environmental certifications on everything from lumber to coffee. To be certificed as clean, athletes and their entourage undergo psychological tests meant to reveal signs they might be prone to doping. They promise to make the results of their usual blood tests available for examination. Then they take a new type of lie detector test to see if they are telling the truth. If the athlete passes, she gets certified as clean. If she doesn’t, she isn’t branded a doper. Instead, the results stay confidential.

The strategy gets around some of the flaws in the current system, says 40-year-old Teague Czislowski, founder of the World Clean Sports Organization, which is promoting the protocol. Conventional anti-doping measures struggle to keep pace with ever-newer drugs and tricks. But a lie detector can catch doping long after drugs have left the body, said Czislowski. And because he isn’t accusing people of doping, the test doesn’t have to be as airtight as the drug tests, he said. Rather than replace standard anti-doping tests, he sees the Clean Protocol as a compliment to them—a way to plug the gaps in the current system.

James Cunnama and his girlfriend, Jodie Swallow (left), have both thrown in their support for Clean Protocol. (Craig Muller/IRONMAN South Africa)

So, is it too good to believe? The certification hinges on the reliability of the lie detector. Tests so far show the device is 85 percent accurate, said Russ Warner, vice president of marketing for Utah-based , the company selling the technology. But that means 8.5 percent of those who pass the test should not have, and, more troublingly, 6.5 percent were honest people classified as lying. In comparison, , though some dispute those figures.

The product, based on , works on the theory that lying takes more mental work than telling the truth. The strain triggers distinctive eye movements. Athletes sit in front of a computer equipped with a small infrared camera aimed at their eyes, and spend about half an hour reading and answering questions on the screen. A computer program analyzes the results and spits out a final score from 0 (don’t trust as far as you can throw) to 100 (George Washington reincarnated).

Converus, which launched earlier this year, is banking on their lie detector’s convenience as they market it for mass-screening of job applicants or government workers in sensitive fields like law enforcement. Checking for doped triathletes is merely a novelty.

But the technology is relatively untested outside the lab, cautioned professor��, a psychologist at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho. Honts studied under one of the leading researchers involved in Converus, and has traveled the world training law enforcement on how to use lie detectors.

[quote]A lie detector can catch doping long after drugs have left the body, said Czislowski. And because he isn’t accusing people of doping, the test doesn’t have to be as airtight as the drug tests.[/quote]

Converus has yet to be certified in the United States for screening government employees. To get that seal of approval, it’s starting a field test in Colorado examining 500 people on parole for drug crimes.

“I haven’t seen any data that it doesn’t work. But I haven’t seen any data that it does outside a laboratory setting,” Honts said. “These are not easy problems to solve. If they were, we would have lie detectors everywhere.”

Meanwhile, in the sporting arena, the Clean Protocol raises some tricky questions. What about the not-so-small pool of athletes who falsely test positive? Regular doping tests are designed to be almost failsafe, to avoid falsely accusing someone who’s innocent. The false positive rate for the lie detector—6.5 percent—would be unacceptable in a test for, say, steroids.

While Clean Protocol is a voluntary program, what happens as teams—like TBB—start requiring it? And what about athletes who opt out? If the program becomes more popular, will there be an implicit suggestion that they’re doping?

Dr. Michael Puchowicz, an Arizona sports medicine doctor and the chief-of-science for the World Clean Sports Organization, says Clean Protocol is so small today that concerns about a negative impact on athletes who don’t volunteer is hypothetical. But it may not stay that way for long.

Puchowicz has spent years examining the doping problem at his blog, (He has also written for ��ԹϺ��). An amateur cyclist and the doctor for Arizona State’s running teams, he was leery of the lie detector’s imperfections at first. But he’s become convinced it’s the best way to help address some of the shortcomings of traditional anti-doping efforts.

“I wish I could give you that ‘Hey, this is going to solve the world’ answer. But that’s not reality. It’s trying to work with what’s out there and see if we can make a difference,” he said.

Cunnuma was not well-known when he nearly won the Ironman Austria triathlon in 2009, raising eyebrows. (Chris Hitchcock/IRONMAN South Africa)

There’s some precedent for using a lie detector for sports doping—German cycling ace Marcel Kittel at the request of German sports magazine Sport Bild. But so far, leaders in the anti-doping world have given Clean Protocol and the organization behind it a cool response.

After Czislowski sent Kona-bound pros an invitation to get certified, a top Ironman official distanced the race from his group. “We cannot vouch for WCSO’s methodology or its credibility as an organization. WCSO’s claims around the effectiveness of the “Clean Protocol” are to the best of our knowledge unsubstantiated,” Ironman’s head of anti-doping, Kate Mittelstadt, wrote in a letter to the pros.

The World Anti-Doping Agency echoed that, saying they welcomed clean sport initiatives from officially sanctioned groups. But “it is not a program that is aligned with the World Anti-Doping Code and we understand it is not sanctioned by IRONMAN,” wrote WADA spokesman Ben Nichols in an e-mail.

Czislowski says he’s not surprised, given that his project is so new and he’s a relative unknown in the anti-doping world. He said he was inspired to jump into the fray by the parade of doping scandals in recent years, and the laments of professional athletes that they were all tarnished. He casts the effort as entirely altruistic, one he has funded. He’s starting at Kona because several pro triathletes asked him to do it, he said. So far, 10 athletes there have applied for certification. “I’ve got no interest in making a single dollar out of this,” he said.

Off the record, some pros have expressed reluctance at being guinea pigs in an unproven experiment, Cunnama said. But he sees little downside. He passed the test. But even if he hadn’t there would have been no consequences from race officials.

“So what have we got to lose?” he said. “For the moment, the WADA system just isn’t catching enough dopers.”

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CrossFit’s Sour Sense of Humor

sperkins-pom — Thu, 29 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

CrossFit has turned the Internet into fitness gold. The company, which made $50 million in 2012, spreads its grueling daily workouts free via its website, builds camaraderie among gym members with specially tailored social media apps, and encourages an endless stream of YouTube videos and photos of CrossFitters striking athletic poses. It’s almost become the Facebook of fitness.

But the company is less tolerant when it comes to the kind of criticism and parody that’s an Internet staple.

Elgin Mones discovered this when YouTube shut down his YouTube channel in late April, after three of his videos, which poke fun at CrossFit, received copyright complaints. Mones, a Maryland attorney and weightlifter, had cultivated a following for his channel, “Exercises in Futility,” which featured workout videos, including ones from CrossFit, coupled with his mocking commentary. The CrossFit videos were the targets of the copyright complaints.

“CrossFit is notorious for doing this—shutting people down because they speak poorly of CrossFit,” Mones complained in a he posted shortly after the channel was shut down in late April.

The treatment Mones got is tame compared to what some other CrossFit critics describe: , , and packets of unflattering information .

One of those critics was behind the now-defunct parody Facebook page and Twitter account known as Ben Smith’s Dad. An avid CrossFitter, the poster, who asked to remain anonymous for this story, started the accounts as a joke aimed at a friend who lost a CrossFit competition to Ben Smith, a star athlete who regularly qualifies for the televised CrossFit Games. Posing as an uber-macho CrossFit fanatic, BSD’s postings quickly gained thousands of followers. What he didn’t know is that CrossFit’s headquarters was apparently tracking him down.

He learned that following what he now admits was an ill-advised posting. The day of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, he sent out a message joking that maybe the marathon had decided to spice things up with a few obstacles, a la Tough Mudder.

Soon after, he got a call from Russell Berger, one of CrossFit’s main spokespeople, said the man. Berger, he said, told the man that he should shut down the Twitter and Facebook accounts and post an apology to Ben Smith’s family. If he didn’t, his name might come out. A film crew might show up at his job.

Later that day, he said, he got an e-mail from someone else at CrossFit’s headquarters saying he would like to meet face-to-face, and suggesting he could drop by his work or gym. The man behind Ben Smith’s Dad took it as a thinly veiled threat. He shut down the accounts and wrote the apology. “Something that was so small and trivial in my mind—that was a joke that gained a following—brought their full wrath to the point that they threatened my employment,” said the man.

Asked to comment, Berger’s e-mail response was “No thanks.”

File all this under CrossFit’s aggressive defense of its public image. Company representatives patrol Web sites, weighing in on comment sections. They have blasted scientists that publish unflattering information. An Ohio gym recently filed a lawsuit alleging Ohio State University scientists made up data about CrossFit injuries.

It’s not entirely clear CrossFit filed the complaint with YouTube that got Mones’ videos yanked, since the company isn’t talking and YouTube wouldn’t say who claimed a copyright foul.

But CrossFit could face an uphill battle proving that the videos violate their copyright, said , director of Copyright and Fair Use at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. Commentary and criticism enjoys legal protection as free speech—known as “fair use”—even if that might mean using a copy of someone else’s video. It depends partly on whether someone is adding to the video to give it a different meaning, or if, for example, they were just copying it to sell their own workout video. “If you’re making fun of the video … in concept that’s a pretty solid fair use concept,” she said.

Mones wrote in an e-mail that people can expect more CrossFit critiques from him. He defended the previous videos as legally protected free speech. The end of his original YouTube channel cost Mones more than half the 36,000 subscribers he had. But he said the publicity has also gotten him more attention, adding hundreds of subscribers to his every day. “Shirt sales and views have reached all-time highs,” he wrote.

More ��ԹϺ�� CrossFit��Coverage:

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Why Is a CrossFit Gym Suing Scientists?

sperkins-pom — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s Note: (1/15/2020) The 2013��study��mentioned in this article was later retracted for falsifying the percentage of participants who dropped out of a CrossFit program because of injury. The author of the study subsequently resigned from the Ohio State University. And in December 2019, a judge ruled in favor of CrossFit in a federal lawsuit��the company brought against the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), the organization that publishes the��Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.��The judge determined the NSCA “deceived and continue[s] to deceive the public and consumers regarding the safety and effectiveness of CrossFit training” and ordered the organization to pay CrossFit a terminating sanction of $4 million after determining it interfered with the lawsuit's discovery process.

CrossFit’s reputation as a workout with a pitbull personality is moving from the gym to the courtroom. A Columbus, Ohio, CrossFit gym is behind a , alleging the reseachers fabricated data that 16 percent of people in a program at the gym dropped out due to injury or overuse.

The fight is the latest skirmish in an escalating debate over the potential hazards of CrossFit, a routine that melds weightlifting and calisthenics into a 10- to 20-minute swirl of muscle-burning intensity. The move presents an unusual, and troubling, dilemma for the world of academic research, where disputes are usually sorted out between scientists or by university overseers.

But Mitch Potterf, owner of the , said he’s resorting to legal action after the scientists and the journal that published the study were unresponsive to his complaints that the study was inaccurate. “I don't like people lying about me,” Potterf said.

Since its inception in the mid-1990s, CrossFit has mushroomed into a fitness craze crossed with a social movement. As many as 8,900 gyms have sprung up worldwide. The CrossFit Games, featuring ripped athletes in dueling workouts, was televised on ESPN. While few scientific studies of CrossFit have been published, , including the disputed one, found people made considerable fitness gains by following the routines.

But along with the popularity has come concerns that the intense workouts and the technical difficulty of some of the movements could lead to injuries. CrossFit has been associated with cases of , a rare condition in which muscle trauma can cause kidney damage. And some experts, including a panel of military and sports researchers, .

“If a particular group brings a lawsuit against publishers of studies, then in the future people will become more chastened about taking any time to look into this.”

CrossFit’s corporate headquarters and its devoted fans have responded with a ferocity that mirrors the workout. The company’s chief scientist—also the father of founder Greg Glassman— with a 92-page critique. A company spokesman has dismissed some scientists as “experts” in quotes, and accused the chief professional association for exercise scientists, the American College of Sports Medicine, of having an anti-CrossFit bias.

But this is the first time it’s come to a lawsuit from a CrossFit-affiliated business. The suit raises this question: Is it a case of an innocent businessman ambushed by scientists peddling fraudulent data? Or is it a company trying to bully researchers when it doesn’t like the results?

This much is clear: Michael Smith, a graduate student working under , an Ohio State exercise physiologist, approached Potterf about studying members of his gym as a way to gauge how CrossFit changed people’s fitness. The researchers put 54 gym members through a battery of tests, then did the same tests following ten weeks of workouts. When the study was published, it stated that nine people dropped out due to “overuse or injury.”

But Potterf said nobody got injured from the workouts—that people missed the final testing for a variety of reasons such as busy schedules. Potterf said he never spoke with the scientists about injuries, and he doesn’t know where they got the data. The lawsuit says the gym has suffered more than $25,000 in damages. “The case is about a guy who starts a gym from scratch and works like crazy to put every ounce of blood sweat and tears into it, and then suffers harm by some unscrupulous doctors,” said , Potterf’s attorney, who is also a member of the gym and took part in the study.

Smith didn’t respond to an e-mail seeking comment. Devor referred questions to his attorney and attorneys for Ohio State University. A university spokesman said he couldn’t comment. The National Strength and Conditioning Association, whose journal published the study and who is also being sued, declined to comment.

But in an e-mail before the lawsuit, Smith said he collected the injury information from Potterf. When people didn’t return for the second test, Smith asked Potterf what happened. “(T)he gym owner went on to tell me how one participant was a wimp, one of them couldn’t stick with the program because of their knee, one because of their back, one was too fat, etc. … All of the explanations he gave to me matched up with overuse/overtraining issues, so that is the wording we used in the manuscript,” Smith wrote.

In an interview before the lawsuit, Devor defended the study, and chalked the criticism up to an overreaction to a single paragraph in the study. “CrossFit has a bit of history that if you speak out against them they are going to attack you. And I have been attacked,” he said. “It’s all just such silliness.”

It’s not clear whether this case will ripple into the broader world of sports science. Courts have generally shied away from getting involved in scientific disputes, said , a New York attorney. He has represented consumer magazines facing complaints from companies unhappy with product reviews, and teaches media law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School.

Some companies have tried to get around this by claiming scientists faked their data, Korzenik said. But the lawyer, who represents plaintiffs in these cases, said such claims are usually little more than legal tactics. Still, just the threat of a lawsuit could have a chilling effect on scientists worried about legal action if study results aren’t complementary to CrossFit. “If a particular product manufacturer or product group brings a lawsuit against publishers of studies, then in the future people will become more chastened about taking any time to look into this,” he said.

Lawsuits alleging damage from research in peer-reviewed academic journals are rare, said Williams S. Bailey, a University of Washington law professor whose book about science and the law is scheduled to be released this summer.

This case could come down to a question of whether the research was up to snuff or not, Bailey said. The way the injury data was gathered sounded potentially “shaky” to him, but a court would have to decide if it amounted to scientific malpractice. Either way, he said, the gym can’t lose. It wins the case, or the lawsuit sends a message to other researchers to beware of CrossFit.

A CrossFit spokesman, Russell Berger, said scientists don’t have anything to worry about, as long as they don’t make up information. “The lesson here for anybody whose paying attention isn’t ‘Don’t research CrossFit.’ The lesson is. ‘Don’t do bad science and lie about your results.’”

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Are We Ready for Omega-3 Beef?

sperkins-pom — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

When meat producers try to make beef healthier, they can run into some odd challenges. Like one facing : How do you keep a filet mignon from tasting like salmon?

GreatO is one of the few companies currently offering omega-3-enriched ground beef. There may soon be more competition in this growing meat market.

Archibeque, a “ruminant nutritionist,” is part of a small cadre of researchers and business people working to make pork and beef healthier by pumping them full of the same omega-3 fatty acids that are found in most fish.

Their interest is fueled by research suggesting these fats cut the risk of and are . The hype around omega-3’s has food companies adding them to everything from eggs to milk to Wonder Bread. So why not the meat counter? Packages of grass-fed beef already declare they have omega-3’s, but it’s just a fraction of the amount recommended by the American Heart Association.

That’s attracted the attention of a few entrepreneurs, . The former energy executive is working with Archibeque and several other Colorado State scientists on ways to feed algae rich in omega-3’s to cattle. The goal is to get omega-3 levels in the meat much closer to salmon, without triggering the fishy flavor that can come with these oils. A serving of grass-fed beef, for example, contains up to 50 milligrams of omega-3s; Smith says a serving of his beef will come closer to 140 milligrams of o-3s. That could help people get the healthy fats they need, even if they aren’t seafood fans. “Not everybody likes fish. That’s really what it comes down to,” said Archibeque.

But don’t fire up the grill yet. Right now, omega-3 infused meat is about as rare as salmon at a Texas barbecue. Smith has had so much trouble finding investors that he’s resorting to crowdfunding to raise $800,000 to finance the research needed to get the beef into stores. Another company that feeds omega-3-rich flax seeds to its cattle just started distributing it’s ground beef through a grocery chain in the Lone Star State. Some processed meats with omega-3 mixed in, like sausages, are sold in Europe and Japan.

Perhaps the most successful outfit in North America so far is a small hog farm near Toronto, Canada. Paul Hill, whose family owns the , feeds fish oil to his pigs to produce omega-3 enriched pork. A quarter pound pork chop from Willowgrove has roughly 450 milligrams of omega-3’s—about one-fifth of what you’d find in an equivalent portion of king salmon. The heart association recommends getting at least two servings of fish per week.

Hill swears his pigs taste the way pork is supposed to. Apparently his customers think so, too. His pork is sold at several fancy Canadian restaurants, and his bacon and sausage was served to world leaders at the 2010 G8 summit in Canada attended by President Barack Obama. Hill plans to expand to the Chicago area later this year.

Even though this industry barely exists, there’s already feuding over whose meat is best. Most of the studies about the benefits of omega-3 focus on DHA and EPA, the kind of fatty acids found in ocean-going organisms like fish. There’s less research on the omega-3 from plants like flax, called ALA, though it’s thought to have benefits, said Penny Kris-Etherton, a Penn State nutritionist and vice-chair of the heart association’s nutrition committee. That has the meat producers using algae and fish oil declaring their products superior. But they can’t escape these facts: enriched burgers won’t ever deliver the amount of omega-3s found in a salmon fillet, and the meat still has relatively high levels of saturated fat. In other words, if you take your beef with a side of fries and a beer, your health gains may wind up a wash.

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