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Plant-Powered Meals for Athletes and Visitors at Paris Olympics
Sixty percent of the meals for visitors to the Olympic Games, which start on July 26 in Paris, France, will be plant powered, while the athletes will also have plenty of plant-based options to power their athletic performance.
“We wanted to focus on the vegetarian options,” said Philipp Würz, who is responsible for food and beverages at Paris 2024. “60 percent of the recipes for the general public will be vegetarian. … It is with immense pride that we can announce that all the food options at La Concorde will be 100 percent vegetarian. It is a first in the history of the Games and the result of four years of work.”
In addition to the health benefits of vegan meals, “the ingredients used correspond to the Paris 2024 strategy, which aims at cutting in half the carbon footprint of the catering for the Olympics - hence the many fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole cereals available,” according to Olympics.com.
“Meat-free hot dogs, falafels, and plant-based 'tuna' will be among the meals offered to athletes and visitors during the Games this summer,” according to Express UK. Charles Guilloy, executive chef for the firm Sodexo Live!, who will run the restaurant at the Olympic Village, told The Guardian that he will be making a plant-based version of beef bourguignon using seasonal vegetables, potatoes, carrots, peas, young leeks, and shallots, among other plant-based options.
The 15,000 athletes who will stay at the Olympic and Paralympic Village will also have plant-based options including cauliflower and baked potato with turmeric; bell pepper, onion, tomato and pepper stir fry (chakchouka); veggie moussaka; and zaatar sweet potato with hummus and chimichurri.
One of those athletes is vegan basketball player Diana Taurasi, who plays for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and holds the record for the most Olympic titles in U.S. basketball history, winning golds with Team USA at Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016, and Tokyo 2020 in 2021.
She recently shared with Bon Appétit some of her go-to vegan meals for fueling up, and she said that she's better on the court now than she was more than a decade ago because of her vegan diet.
Research backs up the athletic performance benefits Taurasi has experienced on a vegan diet. A scientific review published by the Physicians Committee found that plant-based athletes benefit from improvements in heart health, performance, and recovery, because a plant-based diet is high in carbohydrates, low in fat, and rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.
Many Olympians and professional athletes have used a plant-based diet to boost their performance including tennis champions Venus Williams and Novak Djokovic, Formula 1’s Lewis Hamilton, former NFL player Derrick Morgan, soccer players Alex Morgan and Ali Riley, and figure skater Meagan Duhamel.
“It’s no wonder that more and more athletes are racing to a vegan diet,” says review co-author James Loomis, MD, MBA, medical director for the Barnard Medical Center. “Whether you’re training for a couch-to-5K or the Olympics, a plant-based diet is a powerful tool for improving athletic performance and recovery.”
Dr. Loomis, an Ironman Triathlon finisher, is featured in The Game Changers, a documentary on vegan athletes. He also served as team internist for the St. Louis Rams and the St. Louis Cardinals.
A new review has also found that plant-based diets may offer benefits for endurance and aerobic capacity, power, and strength compared to an omnivorous diet. Other research has shown the benefits of a vegan diet for endurance and muscle strength, including a meta-analysis in the British Journal of Nutrition found that plant-based diets improve aerobic performance and that they are just as good as omnivorous diets for strength and power-based exercise.
Visit PCRM.org/Athletes to download our free Power Foods for Athletes e-book with plant-powered recipes and information on how a plant-based diet can fuel athletic performance!
