Cam Newton's Vegan Diet: Should he stay if he remains a vegan?

[hepcat]

In this thread, I would like to address one of the elephant's in the room concerning Cam Newton's possible return to the Panthers in 2020 - his diet.

The Observer wrote an extensive article about his diet change and possible impacts to his performance back in September. 

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nfl/carolina-panthers/article235295427.html

Cam Newton began a vegan diet in February 2019. Since then, a visibly much lighter Cam Newton played in 2 regular season games, both defeats. Could his vegan diet be to blame for these struggles?

Many experts say yes.

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The Observer spoke to several sports nutritionists, dietitians and trainers about Newton’s plant-based diet, and they all came to the same conclusion:

What Newton is eating — or rather, isn’t — may be contributing to his on-field struggles and his body’s ability to recovery from injury.

“Go back to 2015 Cam, badass Cam. He was a pescatarian,” said Chris Howard, a certified nutritionist and strength and conditioning coach from Waxhaw. “Salmon, shrimp, you get a lot of good fats and complete proteins. In fact, (fish) is one of the best protein sources there is.

“Now you take away the most valuable part of that (diet), and ... there’s just no way around it: He can’t recover as well with less nutrients, with less calories and with less muscle mass. It’s just not going to happen.”

Vegan diets lead to nutritional deficiencies and also require "overcompensating" to get enough calories and protein, claims one expert.

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Nancy Clark, a Boston-based sports nutritionist and the author of Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook, said it absolutely is possible for professional athletes to perform at a high level as vegans, but it takes extensive overcompensating.

“The question is: Can you be a vegan athlete and be successful? Of course you can. And if you Google vegan athletes, you’ll see a whole bunch of Olympians and names in every sport,” Clark said. “The concern is: Is he consuming enough protein and enough calories? When you’re in calorie deficit, which he obviously has been because he’s been losing weight, some of the protein that you eat gets burned for gas in the car instead of getting used to build muscle.”

Vegan athletes typically experience deficiencies in vitamin B6 and B12, which can contribute to weakness and fatigue. The primary issue for a vegan athlete, especially one with the listed size Newton has at 6-foot-5 and 245 pounds, is simply not eating enough calories.

A big part of Cam Newton's game has always been physical and based on power. Aside from impacting his athletic performance, dropping that kind of weight can throw the body out of balance and causes problems, another expert claims.

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Coach Ron Rivera previously said Newton had gotten up to 260-265 pounds during the 2016 season. In the same vlog that Newton announced he had gone vegan, he said his goal was to get down to 235-238 pounds this offseason.

“Every human body has what used to be called a set point,” said John Howie, a former champion body builder who’s now a strength trainer with a master’s in nutrition. “That’s a percent of body fat that’s comfortable for that physiology, that it’s going to fight to maintain even if you try to diet beyond that.

Even losing 10 pounds, they said, could result in less energy during athletic competition, as well as an increased susceptibility to injury.

“If he’s in a state of starvation, although minimal and self-imposed, you can overtrain a lot easier,” Howie said. “If he is operating in starvation mode, your body will fight to protect organs. It’ll take muscle after the fat’s gone — the next choice is muscle because that’s all that’s left to burn.

“At 250 pounds, he’d need about 3,800 calories a day to maintain that weight. You almost can’t eat enough beans and vegetables to eat that many calories.”

Could this have been the reason the coaches did not give Cam Newton the ball on the goal line at the end of the game against the Bucs in Week 2? Cam Newton should have been able to power his way through for a 1 yard TD as he has done more times than we can remember. It used to be a sure thing. 

Other players have had noted struggles with switching to a Vegan diet. 

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Hall of Fame tight end Tony Gonzalez went vegan in an attempt to live a healthier lifestyle. According to the Wall Street Journal, three weeks after adopting the diet, he walked into the Kansas City Chiefs training facility and was met with a shock:

“The 100-pound dumbbells he used to easily throw around felt like lead weights,” the article says. “’I was scared out of my mind,’ (Gonzalez) says. Standing on the scale, he learned he’d lost 10 pounds.”

Gonzalez ended up adding small amounts of animal protein back to his diet, which helped him re-gain his strength while maintaining the additional energy his vegan diet provided. (Gonzalez declined to comment for this story. The Chiefs’ team nutritionist at the time, Mitzi Dulan, did not return phone or email requests from the Observer.)

Even the Panthers other well-known Vegan struggled with it.

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Newton’s teammate Gerald McCoy, who also went vegan earlier this year, said he had a similar experience to Gonzalez.

“Realistically for me, what I’ve had to do is I’m not fully vegan anymore,” McCoy told the Observer. “What I found out is, a guy of my size, my stature, I was dropping body fat at a rapid rate. I was building muscle at a rapid rate, but it wasn’t sustainable for me.

“So I had to add some type of animal protein in, like now I eat eggs and I may throw one animal protein in during the week. Because being a vegan at my size, and the mass that I carry around, it just wasn’t sustainable.”

Not only does a Vegan diet impact athletic performance, it can slow the bodies ability to heal from injuries.

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Caloric deficit isn’t the only potential issue vegan athletes face.

Reduced protein intake can also lead to muscular issues and an inability to properly rehab from injuries.

And simply put, animal and plant proteins aren’t the same.

Any person on a strict plant-based diet would need to eat the proper mix of plants to gain sufficient amino acids required to create “complete” proteins.

But even a well-structured vegan diet won’t give the body every amino acid it needs.

And it can even reduce pre-existing muscle mass, which could create a long term impacts to performance.

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Essentially, working out conditions human muscles to absorb leucine. But a vegan diet naturally leads to a leucine deficiency; vegan athletes must eat enough leucine-rich plant proteins — soy, beans, legumes, seeds and nuts are good sources — to overcompensate.

If they don’t, they risk not providing their muscles with the necessary fuel to grow — and in that case, sometimes the body can turn to pre-existing muscle as a last-resort source of protein.

Newton was reportedly "frustrated" with how slow the rehab process on his foot injury was progressing. His diet could have played a major role in that frustration.

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“If he’s losing muscle mass while trying to recover … that’s not a conducive environment at all,” Howard said. “You want all hands on deck, nutritionally, to repair that muscle. I understand how much rehab he’s doing, but when you have less nutrients — specifically protein — to rebuild that, you’re putting yourself behind the eight ball.”

Could returning to a pescatarian diet help Cam Newton's recovery? Most experts say yes.

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Re-introducing small amounts of animal protein — i.e. returning to a pescatarian diet — could help Newton with both his performance and his ability to recover from injury.

“If he gets his calories up and if he gets his protein up, if he would return to having fish and include either dairy milk or soy milk … those are really high-quality proteins that would give him what he needs effortlessly,” Clark said. “He’d start feeling a lot better.”

This was overall a well-researched article on the impact of a vegan diet on a professional athlete.

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Personally, I do not want Cam Newton to return to the Panthers if he decides to remain on his vegan diet. I believe the proof is in the pudding. Cam Newton had missed a grand total of 5 games out of 128 possible starts through 2018. In 2019, after starting his vegan diet, he had obviously lost significant muscle mass, and he missed 14 games, by far the most in his career.

Could the foot injury have resulted in the same number of games missed if Cam was still eating a pescatarian diet? It's possible. But the evidence is clear - his diet did him no favors.

I have no problems with regular everyday people being a vegan. But a professional NFL player has different nutritional needs that a vegan diet may not be able to provide.

[Riverboat Ron]

I personally am a vagitatarian.

[LinvilleGorge]

Oh man, I can't wait for this awesome thread of incoming dietary bro science.

[ellis]

Whatever diet prevents his foot from getting eaten by the turf monster in New England sounds like a winning plan.

[1of10Charnatives]

I like food. I am firmly pro food and favor meat type foods over non meat type foods. Cam can eat whatever he wants, but if there is strong peer reviewed evidence, as it seems there is, that a vegan diet is suboptimal for pro athletes, I would prefer he not do that, for no reason other than I want him, and therefore us, to win.

I am pretty open to people having diverse opinions, but am not sure why Panthers fan opinions would deviate very far from this. Thanks OP for bringing this info to the Huddle's attention.

[Snake]

No he needs to either add fish or Chicken to his diet. McCoy has also suffered going 100% plant based. After he retires he can go back to plants but he needs protein. 

[DeAngelo Beason]

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  Humans need meat.  We are omnivores.  

The bare minimum amount of meat we should consume is probably around 6-10 oz a week.  That is for someone working a desk job that has very little physical activity.  

A professional athlete needs A LOT more than that.  

[CBDellinger]

I am gonna go out on a limb here... I bet Cam has a nutritionist advising him and that guy knows more about it than we do. 

 

[Dex]

I'm not nutritionist. 

 

That being said, bro science Dex feels like this a legitimate concern. Specifically because when I was going vegetarian/vegan for a few months, I felt it. Big time.

[BurnHurnBurn]

Blame?  Nah.  

Is it helping?  Nah.

Is it hurting him?  Maybe?

[BurnHurnBurn]

3 minutes ago, CBDellinger said:

I am gonna go out on a limb here... I bet Cam has a nutritionist advising him and that guy knows more about it than we do. 

 

Cam Newton does what Cam Newton wants.  If he tell his nutritionist no meat, they won’t build his diet with meat.

Pretty simple.

[1of10Charnatives]

1 minute ago, CBDellinger said:

I am gonna go out on a limb here... I bet Cam has a nutritionist advising him and that guy knows more about it than we do. 

 

Every rocket scientist knows more about it than I do, but I only need Google to determine necessary escape velocity from Earth's atmosphere. It seems fairly straightforward that vegan diets require significant overcompensation in order to consume the necessary calorie count and nutrition to sustain a pro athlete's energy and recovery needs. I agree that Newton probably has a nutrtionist, but professionals in the private employ of the wealthy are only advisors. We don't know what goes on there, but we do know that he has less weight, seems to be less durable and powerful than in the past, and that these things can be a consequence of vegan diets not providing all that is needed to an athletic body. So the evidence we have available does suggest that his diet could be an issue despite any professional advice.

[emcannon]

Literally do not care.

[hepcat]

Just now, 1of10Charnatives said:

Every rocket scientist knows more about it than I do, but I only need Google to determine necessary escape velocity from Earth's atmosphere. It seems fairly straightforward that vegan diets require significant overcompensation in order to consume the necessary calorie count and nutrition to sustain a pro athlete's energy and recovery needs. I agree that Newton probably has a nutrtionist, but professionals in the private employ of the wealthy are only advisors. We don't know what goes on there, but we do know that he has less weight, seems to be less durable and powerful than in the past, and that these things can be a consequence of vegan diets not providing all that is needed to an athletic body. So the evidence we have available does suggest that his diet could be an issue despite any professional advice.

Could not have said it better myself