Last week, there was yet another article in the WaPo Health section about the benefits of going gluten-free. Sports Illustrated had an article about gluten-free athletes a couple of years ago, touting the benefits of freeing up your body's metabolism from the breakdown of gluten in the intestine to more athletic performance work (reallocating scarce resources in the body makes sense right?). I shoulda eaten more carbs... To be fair, nobody is advocating carb-free diets for athletic performance. In "Endurance Sports Nutrition", Dr. Eberle points out that the science is pretty straight forward on this: you need carbs to perform and keep you going for the long haul until the body can access glycogen stores, but carbohydrates are the main thing that will keep you in the long races. You can read more about this from the publisher's website What we are discussing is whether gluten, being a difficult protein to break down, can slow you down just a little. In...
