Buyers beware: Supplements can be beneficial, but athletes must do homework

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By Andrew Petersen | Sunday, July 06, 2008 |

Scott Herkes, back, is the owner of Max Muscle Sports Nutrition in Bettendorf. Herkes, who opened the franchise of the California-based business six months ago, says, “Athletes push themselves to the limit. We just fill in the gaps.” Buy this Photo

An athlete’s emphasis on diet and training is as old as competition.

But 2,500 years ago, Plato didn’t have to worry about his figs being laced with Ephedra. And his post-workout recovery drink was more apt to be wine, not a strawberry-banana protein shake.

While the focus remains much the same, the modern athlete deals with considerably more complexities. From fad diets to supplements touting fictitious ingredients, the health side of sports requires a skeptical eye.

Properly used, though, nutritional science possesses the ability to benefit athletes more than ever. New opportunities continue to pop up, for those in sports, as well as in business.

“Athletes push themselves to the limits,” said Scott Herkes, owner of Max Muscle Sports Nutrition in Bettendorf. “We just fill in the gaps.”

Six months ago, Herkes opened a franchise of the California-based business.

It was quite a leap for an ex-Navy electronic technician, but he saw opportunity in his passion. After 100 hours of training, Herkes is a certified nutritional specialist.

Two decades ago, he would have been hard-pressed to imagine such a booming industry. But ways of nutritional thinking have evolved.

It didn’t take Herkes long to hook up with the Quad-City Flames and Quad-City Steamwheelers to develop nutritional plans to complement their training. He also works extensively with high school and college athletes.

“People realize there’s an advantage to be had,” Herkes said. “I think bodybuilders helped pioneer a lot of good health and nutritional things that are going on now. I think people have learned a lot from them.”

In the eyes of many, bodybuilders have become almost synonymous with the performance-enhancing drug culture. But the results of supplements — legal or otherwise — are obvious enough to spark curiosity in other athletes.

That’s something that troubles dieticians.

“It’s that fear that someone’s taking something that (you’re) not,” Lynda Murray said. “We know more about life cycles of bats than we do about nutrition. It’s very scary.

“There was a study done on Olympic athletes where they were asked a question: If you took a supplement and could be on the medal stand but you would be dead in five years, would take it? Overwhelmingly, they said yes.”

Murray, a dietician in Burlington, Iowa, recently became a Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics, a credential instituted by the American Dietetic Association last year.

She’s held a sports nutrition interest since her cyclist father used to come home with “all kinds of tubs and powders.”

Routinely speaking with young athletes, Murray pushes natural food over anything from a bottle.

She admits some supplements can be beneficial but cautions consumers to closely examine what they are buying. Since the industry was deregulated in 1994, Murray said quality control has dropped, and bottles can tout ingredients they don’t really contain.

Herkes has encountered such a situation in the first few months his business has been open.

Alongside a product called N.O. Explode, he has displayed a copy of a class-action lawsuit. The complaint is that Explode’s “CEM3” ingredient doesn’t exist.

All the more reason Murray calls on athletes to first examine their basic nutritional needs.

“It’s still a dieting world,” she said. “Most athletes severely underfuel. They do not meet calorie needs. Hydration is terrible.

“(But increasingly, athletes) are much more receptive to the message that diet can help their performance.”

As competitive athletes, Murray and Herkes know the quest for improvement isn’t dying off anytime soon.

Despite their varying methodologies, both see their job as a chance to offer competitors effective and healthy ways to gain the edge they seek.

Nutrition tips

Easy, yet often overlooked sports nutrition tips:

Stay hydrated: Drink as much hydrating fluids as possible before, during and after exercising. Avoid coffee and energy drinks that cause kidneys to pull water from the bloodstream.

Eat: Food heavy in carbohydrates and fluids 2-to-4 hours before competition promotes physical and mental comfort. During exercise, replace carbohydrates every 30 minutes through breads, cereals or energy bars. After a workout, consume more carbohydrates and proteins within an hour to aid in recovery.

Did you know?

Chocolate milk can serve as a great post-workout drink, helping recovery with the desired 4-to-1 carbohydrate-to-protein ratio.

Andrew Petersen can be contacted at (563) 383-2288 or apetersen@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.