Junk food slows down world-record round-the-globe biker
If you filled your car up with craptastic gasoline, it would not run very well. Something similar could be said about the human body, and if you happen to be attempting to set a new World Record for bicycling around the world, your body running poorly is quite serious indeed. According to Mark Beaumont from Scotland, the man who just set that particular World Record, both the United States and Australia offered no healthy alternatives for him to eat, so he had to fill up on junk food. "There were no healthy options - and it had a massive effect on my mental focus and body strength," Beaumont told The Guardian. In Australia, that meant eating Mars bars and tins of baked beans. He doesn't specifically say what he ate here in the States, but McDonalds and Burger Kings were probably lining the streets wherever he went. Granola stations, as you may already know, are in shorter supply. Oh well, he made it around the globe and smashed the previous record by 81 days.
[Source: The Guardian via Treehugger]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dad 11:15AM (2/27/2008)
"the man who just set that particular World Record, both the United States and Australia offered no healthy alternatives for him to eat, so he had to fill up on junk food"
What BS. At least he knows how to play the "victim" card, so the trip was not a waste?
As they say, the "The Devil made me do it!"
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steven 11:36AM (2/27/2008)
Ahh... key fact missing from this post. He is some level of vegetarian, which would go a long way to clarify his plight.
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MarkR 12:12PM (2/27/2008)
I call B.S. on that statement. As an avid cyclist there are tons of options all over the States to replenish your carload and protein needs. But even if he is vegetarian there are still tons of options.
sounds like he's just to damn picky and ignorant for his own good and doesn't know what to look for or where to look for it.
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fnc 12:30PM (2/27/2008)
Ha ha yes I'm sure it's funny to pull out the tired old "all Americans are fat and lazy and do nothing but scarf down donuts all day" card for his international audience, but we do have grocery stores with produce sections everywhere you go. If he couldn't be bothered to figure out where to find what he needed, then it sounds like maybe he was the one being a little mentally lazy.
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Throwback 1:51PM (2/27/2008)
So he plans a round the world ride and does not plan for food? If he could not find healthy food to eat in the USA or OZ he wasn't looking very hard.
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GenWaylaid 5:59PM (2/27/2008)
Throwback,
OF COURSE he wasn't looking very hard! He was trying to get around the WORLD as fast as possible. I doubt anything he ate was purchased more than twenty feet from the highway. It takes some local knowledge to find stores with good vegetarian food. That said, he chould have done a bit better if he tried the chain supermarkets.
In the Australian outback, perhaps his only alternative to more Mars bars was to skin and eat a kangaroo.
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TIMMAH! 7:21PM (2/27/2008)
I would have thought the baked beans would have made him go faster...
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