Veganism is an alternative dietary practice where person is abstaining from the use of animal products, particularly in diet. Reasons for that differ. Among individuals, who practice vegan diet, we can also find recreational athletes. In the exploratory part of the master's thesis, vegans completed a three-day nutritional diary, with which we aimed to evaluate diets' quality. The experimental group included recreational athletes, aged between 25 and 35. The main question we wanted to answer was, if they fulfil their daily protein and essential amino acid needs. We compared food intake of recreational athletes (vegan group) with that of omnivores, who were also recreational athletes (control group). Vegan group consumed 1,30 g of protein/(kg BM·day), which did not satisfy daily requirements for protein consumption for recreational vegan athletes (1,4-2,0 g protein/(kg BM·day)). When we compared diets of both groups, we could see that all subjects of the control group (N = 5) met the recommendations for protein intake, in contrast to only two vegans (N = 2) out of five (N = 5) in the vegan group. With regards to essential amino acids, we came to the conclusion that vegan group did not satisfy recommended daily intake values for lysine (45 mg/g protein) and methionine (16 mg/g protein). In fact, they consumed 44 mg of lysine/g of protein and 14,1 mg of methionine/g of protein. Compared to vegan group, the control group consumed more histidine (p = 0,030), isoleucine (p = 0,037), leucine (p = 0,047), lysine (p = 0,00002), methionine + cysteine (p = 0,005), methionine (p = 0,00008), and threonine (p = 0,015) from their total daily protein intake.
|
