Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life

carbohydrate and protein, dietary fat must be broken down into a form the body can utilize. The body breaks fat into fatty acids—nutrients it can assimilate and put to work. Consuming fat sources that are directly made up of fatty acids is advantageous since the body will be able to make instant use of them.
     
    Foods Rich in Fatty Acids
     

     
     
     
    The most complete, balanced form of one-step nutrition is sprouted foods. Raw, enzyme-rich sprouts are plentiful in all three food components: simple carbohydrate, amino acids, and fatty acids. They are predigested (as some describe it) so the body does not have to produce its own enzymes, plus the nutrients are in a usable form—a considerable net gain in total energy supplied by the food. (Contrast this to processed, cooked proteins that the body must break down before they can be utilized, creating a significant loss in energy efficacy.) Spouted legumes such as chickpeas, lentils, and mung beans are excellent. The sprouting process converts the complex carbohydrate in legumes into simple carbohydrate, the protein into usable amino acids, and the fat into fatty acids, requiring no extra work on the body’s part and therefore raising the net gain. Foods rich in essential fatty acids, such as flaxseed, can be sprouted as well for a premium, usable fuel source. Indeed, essential fatty acids are a superior source of healthy energy.
     

nutrient-dense whole foods will keep you satisfied
     
    “You are what you eat.” This is true, but there’s more to it than that. Eating food that is not efficiently absorbed and assimilated by the body will greatly limit its effectiveness. The way to ensure you are getting maximum return on your eating—the most energy out of your food—is simpler than you might think. In fact, the simpler the better. As a general rule, the less that has been done to your food, the better its return will be.
     
    Food with low nutrient value is a major factor in escalating obesity rates. This serious health concern, though not desirable, does serve a purpose: It sends a clear message that something is out of balance. For optimum health and lasting benefits, the cause of the problem must be addressed, not the symptom. Specifically treating extra body fat, as many diets do, is treating only the symptom. Excess body fat is a clear indication that optimal health has not been achieved, and to treat it without creating a healthier lifestyle on a holistic level is merely spot-treating. Food cravings, usually for sugary or starchy foods, are often a telltale sign that the diet lacks nutrients or is tired. Cravings and chronic hunger, if not addressed, will lead to weight gain and fatigue in the short term and, in the long term, any number of health problems.
     
    We are inundated with nutrient-lacking foods, most of them processed and refined foods eaten for convenience sake. We know that fresh fruit, vegetables, legumes, seeds, essential fatty acids, and compete protein are part of a healthy diet, but we believe we simply don’t have time to prepare meals that reflect this. The result? A low-energy yet overfed society.
     
    Nutrient-lacking convenience foods, ubiquitous in our society, cause us to lack energy.
     
     
    Appetite will diminish as the quality of food improves. A real-life example of a stable of racehorses in the United States nicely illustrates this. These horses had impressive track records, and since the stakes in horse racing can be high, the horses were pushed hard in their daily training. But the trainers noticed an odd habit the horses had adopted. They had all, within the same week, started gnawing on the wood beams of their stables. Their trainers didn’t know what to make of this peculiar behavior. They initially thought the horses needed more food. And so extra food was given to them, but the gnawing was relentless. By now, the horses were becoming overweight: They no longer looked like the racehorses they were but like draft horses.
     
    After much deliberation, the trainers determined that the grain being fed to the horses had been grown in over-farmed soil and had been milled to the point of significant fiber loss. It therefore lacked essential nutrients. When a new source of nutrient-dense grain was found and this grain was fed to the horses, their appetites quickly dropped off and the gnawing stopped. The horses’ chronic hunger had been due to lack of nutrition, not lack of food.
     
    When supplied with many