They knock back between 600-800 pints of milk each month
You're probably familiar with the importance of strength and power to athletes involved in college football and the NFL. In addition to resistance training, you've got to eat to bulk up too.
Dietary details of the Boise State Broncos were recently linked online, and it looks like a fairly sizeable nutrition plan.
College football diet
Here's what the players reportedly eat and drink each day:
- Breakfast: Two bagel sandwiches with ham and cheese, two apple
- Snack 1: Three large handfuls of grapes with one cup of granola
- Lunch: Baked potato with low-fat sour cream, a can of chilli and a pint of milk
- Snack 2: One pint of chocolate milk or protein shake
- Dinner: Two chicken patties or salmon patties on wheat buns with cheese, three cups of oven fries and a can of green beans
- Snack 3: Four oatmeal cookies with a pint of milk
For most people, milk and cookies are far from a healthy meal. However, for athletes who need 5,000 - 6,000 calories a day, the damage is at least limited.
In 2016, Boise State installed a 'fuelling station' at their home of Bleymaier Football Center.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohI9Me_EqQY
The Boise fuelling station
By making meals easy to access, the center is completely catered to give players an extra advantage. At the time of its opening, local outlet
Idaho Statesman documented the news and the thoughts of the team's coach Bryan Harsin:
"Everybody's lifting, everybody's running, everybody's doing the same thing. Alright, your programme may be different, you might do a little more stretching or not lift as heavy, but everybody's doing the same exact thing.
"So how do you get the advantage? It's how you eat."
It's estimated the players put away between 600-800 pints of milk per month, and over 300 cups of yoghurt in that time too. The center puts in two or three bulk food orders every month, each costing around $2,000 (around £1,580).
Included in a typical food order are 200 eggs, 50 bagels, six loaves of bread and 40 apples. That sound like one epic Man versus Food challenge.
It's proof that investment in sport leads to results - even for something as seemingly trivial as canteen food.
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