Can rowers be elite without meat?

Vegan and vegetarian eating habits are gaining popularity around the world. This is prompting some elite rowers to ask the question: “can I reduce or eliminate meat from my diet and still be a high performance athlete?”

To find an answer, World Rowing connected with World Champion Dutch coastal rower, Janneke van der Meulen, as well as Kim McQueen, Rowing Canada Aviron’s performance nutritionist who has worked with Canada’s top rowers including the Tokyo 2020 Gold medalist women’s eight. The answer, it turns out, has more to do with what’s inside the food you are eating than the food itself.

PART 1 – Life as a Vegan World Champion with Janneke van der Meulen

When Janneke van der Meulen won her first gold as part of the Dutch Mixed Double at the 2021 World Rowing Coastal Championships, it marked a high point in her career as a rower. She had reached the pinnacle of performance in one of the sport’s newest, fastest growing, and most demanding disciplines, coastal rowing. What might sound surprising was that she did it as a vegan.

For some making the choice to go with a vegan diet is based on health, for other’s its an ethical decision. For some, including van der Meulen, it’s a mix of both.

“I started as a vegetarian and moved slowly to fruity-vega,” says van der Meulen of her transition away from meat toward vegan diet. “I no longer had any argument to eat animal products. A vegan diet centred around fruits and some plants can yield significant performance advantages.”

While being a vegetarian means not eating meat, being a vegan means not eating meat and also not eating any animal products. “One thing all vegans have in common,” states the UK-based Vegan Society on their website, “is a plant-based diet avoiding all animal foods such as meat (including fish, shellfish and insects), dairy, eggs and honey.” So, if it is an animal (e.g. meat), comes from an animal (e.g. milk, eggs), or is made by an animal for its own use (honey), it is off the menu for vegans.

PART 2 – Finding the Right Fuel with Kim McQueen

Nutrients are key

“Everything that happens to the body requires nutrition,” says McQueen, who has spent years advising Canada’s top rowers on fuelling world class performances. “The way our body is built, the way it functions when we are active is driven by carbohydrates and fats so we need to have the right nutrients on board to do things.”

For rowers, where the demands of training are significantly higher than many other activities, the demand for these nutrients is also higher. “Rowers bodies require between 5000 to 10,000 caleries per day,” says McQueen, who points out that the biggest challenge for many rowers can actually be finding time to eat that much food. The high volumes of training that rowers often pride themselves on, also presents a barrier to nutrition. “So much training takes up time that could be used for nourishment to recover and rebuild.”

Despite advancements in easy to ingest and digest nutritional products like gels, fuelling during training is more difficult for rowers than most other athletes. “You have an oar in your hands,” points out McQueen, “so it is not like being on a bike where you can put food in your mouth.”

Sources of nutrients

So, there is no question that rowers need nutrients and elite rowers need to be fuelling as often as they can, which is pretty much whenever they are not rowing or sleeping. But what are nutrients and, more importantly, where can rowers get them?

“Protein, carbohydrates (carbs) and fat are the three nutrient categories,” says McQueen. “All three are important.” While carbs and fat are common enough in vegetarian or vegan sources, protein is traditionally thought of as coming primarily from meat. “There is protein in meat,” says McQueen, “but also in eggs, Greek yoghurt, oats or nuts and nut butters. Protein powders are sometimes a good option because they are easy to assimilate as a liquid when demands for nutrients are high with lots of training volume.”

PART 3 – Takeaways

It is an elite athlete’s “optimal fuel,” says van der Meulen of a vegan diet. “You are your own biggest competitor, if you continue to eat animal products.”

“Good nutrition it one of the biggest aspects of recovery and overall health,” says McQueen, who says this advice applies to all athletes, no matter whether they eat animal products, just plants or a mix of both. She recommends a “food first” attitude of looking for real food containing these the nutrients human bodies need and the supplementing with powders or other products rather than using them as a replacement for “real food”. “Especially for new vegetarians or vegans, be sure to have enough iron and vitamin B12, so supplements for these might be important.”