Post Race Food

Hi everyone! It’s been far too long since I've actually posted anything on my blog, life just took over and so many changes occurred! The largest one I guess I would say is that I went back to school for a second bachelors in Nutrition in order to be a Registered Dietitian and help people eat right and live longer, healthier lives! The journey is ridiculously hard as I’m not truly a chemistry person and the first year and a half of the program is a lot of chemistry! More about my journey as I try to keep up with my blogging starting now! I did a wonderful race yesterday, a 5K, nothing insanely difficult but since I broke my foot last September and it still acts up every once and awhile it can make running consistently really difficult.

Now I know we all are thankful for the food post a hard 5k, 10k, half marathon and so on but the last few races I've been privileged to run have had some less than stellar nutritional choices available post run.  First off, and most offensive are pork rinds, that's right they were serving pork rinds at a race supporting funding for cancer research.  This disgusting product shouldn't be a part of anyone's diet, ever, but most especially those receiving treatment or in remission from cancer-very disturbing to me. Second, comes a very common one, Skippy peanut butter, let's be real most of us know there are very few real ingredients in this 'peanut butter'. My parents use it on the rare occasion they have to trap a mouse, they wouldn't actually consume it themselves. The ingredients in the regular fat version are: Roasted peanuts-everyone should attempt to have organic if possible and raw peanuts are best, sugar-as a country we consume far too much of this ingredient, hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed, soybean, and rapeseed)-hydrogenated oils have been shown to cause high cholesterol as they are a form of trans fats and all three of these oils are part of the genetically modified organism (GMO) family, which should be avoided and lastly salt. The scary part isn't even above, which is scary enough for me to never pick up the stuff but when you choose the low fat version of this ‘peanut butter’ you get all sorts of other additives: Roasted peanuts, corn syrup solids, sugar, soy protein, salt, hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed, soybean and rapeseed, mono and diglycerides, minerals (magnesium oxide, zinc oxide, ferric orthophosphate, copper sulfate), vitamins (niacinamide, pyridoxide hydrochloride, folic acid). So as you can see you are getting a whole lot more than you should in your ‘peanut butter’.

I know it might be wrong to complain about free food after a race, I just feel runners know better than to put this junk in their bodies so why not serve us better products? Hell I'd even be willing to pay a couple more dollars for post-race food I'd actually eat. Just felt like sharing this, maybe get some conversation started, and maybe even make a change!