Could you go vegan?

Cutting out meat and dairy is kind to the environment but how does it affect cycling performance? Oliver Bridgewood spent January finding out

How do you spot the only vegan in the room? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you... Or so the joke goes. But veganism seems to be everywhere these days. It’s clearly become trendy, and judging from social media, there’s plenty of interest among cyclists too. To find out what all the fuss is about, I decided to go vegan for the whole of January. I wanted to see whether it would be possible to combine a vegan diet with improving — or at least maintaining — my fitness as an amateur cyclist.

David Zabriske and Simon Geschke are notable pro riders who have competed at the highest level on a vegan diet, but they represent a tiny minority among the sport’s top echelon. How would I fare? Would I lose weight, how would it affect my performance on the bike, and would I be able to get enough protein?

And so it began...

I set about my newfound veganism with great enthusiasm. I was completely open-minded towards it, and felt motivated to keep it up, having eaten plenty of chocolate and meat over the festive period. From a purely scientific standpoint, the environmental argument for veganism is strong. Research at the University of Oxford suggests that the meat industry, beef in particular, has a huge environmental impact (www.pnas.org/ content/113/15/4146).

Meat is produced and consumed at enormous environmental cost. Livestock requires vast amounts of water, feed and space but also creates huge amounts of waste. Put simply, producing meat represents a less efficient use of the world’s resources — and if everyone ate a plant-based diet, we could reduce global warming and eliminate food poverty. It is estimated that the world’s cattle consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7bn people — more than the entire current human population of the Earth. The UN published a report in 2010 declaring that Western diets rich in dairy and meat were “unsustainable” and that “animal products cause more damage than construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as fossil fuels.”

Now, I’m all for saving the planet, but does a vegan diet mean you have to live a joyless life of penance, drearily eating cabbages? A common misconception is that a vegan diet, even a vegetarian diet, is boring and bland. This is probably just because we Brits have traditionally eaten lots of meat and dairy. Restaurants and eateries commonly include vegetarian options — but all too often they’re unimaginative afterthoughts tagged on to the end of a menu merely to tick a box. Consequently a perception has developed that vegan and vegetarian food is dull.

Fortunately I was able to gain inspiration and insight into vegan

“Put simply, producing meat is an inefficient use of the world’s resources”