Is Veganism Really Game-Changing?

Netflix film The Game Changers stirred up a furore around going ‘plant-based’ to get fitter, stronger and faster, but does the reality match the hype?

- David Bradford

In the opening sequence of The Game Changers documentary, presenter James Wilks – a former mixed martial arts champion – explains that his interest in veganism started when he got injured and began gunning up on recovery.

He claims to have spent 1,000 hours researching recovery-boosting nutrition. One thousand hours? Assuming he studied 9 am to 5 pm without lunch breaks, that’s a full six months of solid reading. Anyway, amid these mountains of paperwork, he stumbled upon an article purporting to prove that Roman gladiators (“the original professional fighters”) ate a mostly plant-based diet. Wilks’s mind is blown. Over the rest of the film, he advances the case, in no uncertain terms, that eating only plant-based foods is better for recovery, health and – crucially – sporting performance. It was no surprise, then, The Game Changers garnered enormous attention, even among ordinarily hard-headed cyclists.

Full disclosure to kick off: I eat a mostly plant-based diet; I’m not a strict vegan, but I avoid meat and dairy products most of the time (largely for ethical reasons). If my position were prone to bias, it would be skewed in favour of The Game Changers – its message that veganism boosts sporting performance is good news for me. My job here, though, is to be unswervingly objective in answering this question: will going vegan make you a fitter, faster cyclist?