MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
If you had to ride a bike for four hours then pedal it uphill at full effort for another hour, first of all, (laughter) I mean, how? What would you even eat? What would you even drink to get through that? Well, that is among the challenges this week at the men's Tour de France, which has now entered the Alps. And it turns out, within the last decade or so, professional cyclists have found new ways to eat more than ever while on the bike. You can call it a carbohydrate revolution. Tim Podlogar is one such carbs revolutionary. He studies exercise physiology at the University of Exeter and has now advised two Tour de France teams on nutrition. He's here to tell us about it. Hi there. Welcome.
TIM PODLOGAR: Hi.
KELLY: Hi. So, I mean, I have to imagine that elite Tour de France athletes have always eaten a lot, like thousands and thousands of calories a day. Briefly lay out what has changed in the last decade or so.
PODLOGAR: It's only the last few years that we are really quantifying what they are eating. And we are now seeing these super high values of food on and off the bike just to basically be able to match what they expend while they're cycling.
KELLY: Yeah.
PODLOGAR: So we would be thinking about 6,000 to 8,000 kilocalories on a mountainous day like it was yesterday, for example.
KELLY: And is one of the big changes that they're now eating while on the bike? They're not just eating an enormous bowl of pasta the night before?
PODLOGAR: Yes, it's just not enough to basically eat a lot after a stage or in the morning. The number of hours is limited. The riders also need to do other things to recover well, and simply they cannot digest all the food. So the riders are now eating probably in excess of 120 grams per hour. I think we are talking about, like, on a daily basis - I don't know - 1,200 grams of carbohydrates.
KELLY: So how many bowls of pasta are we talking, roughly?
PODLOGAR: A lot. Many.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: More than...
PODLOGAR: Impossible to eat, I would say.
KELLY: ...The rest of us should be eating (laughter). OK.
PODLOGAR: Yeah.
KELLY: Is one of the changes, too, that they're not eating bowls of pasta while on the bikes? They're taking in gels, special sports drinks that have been especially formulated - what? - to be absorbed very fast.
PODLOGAR: Absorb very fast and allow the riders to actually tolerate these amounts. There are certain ratios between different types of carbohydrates, and certain special types of carbohydrates, that allow us to basically prevent or minimize gastrointestinal distress. But also, these riders are really highly trained to be able to consume such high amounts during exercise. So in training, not just racing, they're eating a lot.
KELLY: Do these athletes still enjoy food? It seems like a lot of eating that's a lot of work on top of all the work.
PODLOGAR: Yeah, it's a good question. So cycling teams bring their own chefs to the races. Very often, these chefs used to work in Michelin-star restaurants. So they are, like, highly skilled chefs. And they try to make the food as tasty as possible. And believe it or not, in the last week in a three-week cycling race, it's really difficult to find the appetite in those riders. But they simply know that they need to eat, so they just do it.
KELLY: Tim Podlogar, does any of this apply to other endurance sports? What about all of us weekend warriors who are putting on our running shoes or biking shoes to go out for a 5K or 10K? I assume we would not benefit from eating like this.
PODLOGAR: No, definitely not. There is no - yeah - way that we would benefit from it. It's basically, like, just for the elite athletes that are really expending a lot of energy. And we just can't eat the same way as they do because we would get severely obese.
KELLY: You're killing my dreams of adding a large bowl of pasta carbonara to my diet every night.
PODLOGAR: (Laughter).
KELLY: Tim Podlogar of the University of Exeter. He's currently a nutrition adviser to Tudor Pro Cycling, a team now racing the Tour de France. Thank you very much.
PODLOGAR: Thank you.
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