THE STAFF OF DEATH - White Bread: A Social History of the Store Bought Loaf - page 34

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THE STAFF OF DEATH
Dreams of Health and Discipline
The whiter your bread, the quicker you're dead .
—Dr. P. L. Clark's Home Health Radio , c. 1929
GRAIN DAMAGE
Professional cyclists spend a lot of time thinking about what to eat. Burning seven thousand calories in
a race will do that. And, for many decades, cyclists' obsessive solution to the food question focused on
building muscle and storing up energy. This meant carbohydrates and protein piled on top of carbohy-
drates and protein. Giant carb-loaded dinners of pasta and bread were an essential pre-race ritual. In the
mid-2000s, however, elite cyclists began to think about food differently—not just as the building block
of muscle and energy, but as a kind of medicine.
Pro racers and their amateur emulators began to seek out “anti-inflammatory foods,” like raspberries,
ginger, and salmon, believed to speed recovery from injuries. And they began to avoid foods deemed
“pro-inflammatory”—foods that purportedly irritated bodily tissues, caused aching joints, and sapped
stamina. Shockingly, for a group of people accustomed to large amounts of carbohydrates, wheat, along
with other foods containing the protein gluten, topped cyclists' list of inflammatory agents.
Christian Vande Velde, a popular rider from the Chicago suburbs, led the break away from gluten. A
pro cyclist since the late 1990s, Vande Velde had helped Lance Armstrong to two of his Tour de France
victories and racked up an impressive record of race wins of his own. But he was also plagued by injur-
ies, and, by 2007, he was no longer a young rider. It would have been easy to write him off—until the
wins started rolling in again and 2008 turned into Vande Velde's best season ever. That year he claimed
stage wins in the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia, and the Paris-Nice spring classic. He took the overall
winner's jersey at the important Tour of Missouri, third place in the Tour of California, and third place
in the U.S. Pro National Time Trial Championship.
Many observers attributed Vande Velde's success that year to his switch to a strong new team. Vande
Velde, however, pointed to his diet. That year, following the advice of sports physiologist Allen Lim,
Vande Velde had gone “gluten free.” 1 Though the shift was painful—Vande Velde found giving up bread
particularly difficult—it was worth the suffering. As he told reporters, on a gluten-free diet he slept bet-
ter, felt mentally fresh, and performed at a higher level than ever before. “Physically I am a lot leaner.
… I am less lethargic and my energy levels have been quite good. … I recover quicker and maybe have
less inflammation in my back and hips.” Soon Vande Velde's teammates copied his diet, and then other