Miscellaneous Rants: The Post-Game soccer "treat"

I'm an official with the local soccer club, so various vendors send me advertisements and the like.  One thing I get is offers for fundraisers, which are sometimes marketing devices for companies; and sometimes these marketing devices are win-win deals that are ok.  But many of them are not good for the club, as far as I am concerned, and we do not pursue them all.


Today, I got an email from someone with a company that is marketing a food product as " [a] great post match nutrition source for the players, offering carbohydrates to refuel and key nutrients from whole grains, real fruit, and nuts."  This product is probably reasonably healthful, but COME ON.  Kids who play 2/3 of a 60 minute soccer match on a small field DO NOT NEED TO REFUEL!

Soccer should be about fitness and fun (and soccer).  There is no resisting the "treat" mentality at the end of a game.  I personally don't like it, and always bring fruit.  But this kind of marketing is just disingenuous.  Kids of the age that get post-game "treats" can't be spending more than 200-300 calories in their games and just don't need to "refuel".  Please, if you want to give your kid a snack, fine...but don't rationalize that s/he needs to "refuel" just because of a little exercise.  They aren't exactly running marathons out there!  Exercise is not an excuse to eat unnecessarily.

Finally, I did get something great from my kids' swim team about this, published by the American Swimming Coaches Association.  The newsletter is below.  The part in italics was added by the local coach.  Someone gets it.

Carbohydrate Loading

 

By Keith B. Wheeler, Ph.D. And Angeline M. Cameron

 

Question:   What exactly is carbohydrate loading?  Is it appropriate for age group swimmers?

Answer:  Carbohydrate loading refers to the process by which the carbohydrate (glycogen) stores in an athlete's active muscles are increased significantly above normal levels.  This loading of carbohydrate in the muscles is accomplished through a combination of training and diet manipulation.

Specific techniques for carbohydrate loading have changed since the method was developed in Sweden.  The original program consisted of 7 days of dietary management, beginning with exhaustive exercise bouts on the 1st day, followed by 3 days of extremely low carbohydrate consumption.  The next 3 days consisted of an extremely high carbohydrate intake that caused the muscles to super increase their carbohydrate stores.  In some people, this regimen produced nausea, fatigue, and diarrhea.  Therefore, less drastic carbohydrate loading regimens were developed and are currently recommended.

Although, when done properly, it does increase muscle-glycogen stores above normal levels, carbohydrate loading is most useful for athletes who are preparing for endurance events such as triathons, marathons, cycling races, or open water long distance swimming.  It should be done only a few times in a year.  A nutritional concern that is more important to an age-group swimmer than carbohydrate loading is consuming enough carbohydrate on a daily basis.  Age-group swimmers should get at least 60% of their daily calories from carbohydrate, which will maintain their muscle glycogen at levels that will support their training.

From a physiology point, as stated at the end of the newsletter, carbohydrate loading is helpful for endurance events lasting longer than 2 hours. With events lasting less than that, there is no need for it, since those are not long enough to deplete normal glycogen storages. In swimming events (from 50s to the mile), the loss of energy that a swimmer experiences is due to a decrease in the muscle cell pH, which takes place because of the accumulation of by-products of the muscle contraction. Therefore, unless you are going for a 10K swim, we would not recommend carbohydrate loading, neither for age-groupers or senior swimmers.