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Science

German Scientists Say Spinach Should Be Banned In Sports (cnn.com) 180

Posted by EditorDavid from the prohibiting-Popeye dept.
Thelasko quotes a surprising CNN story about spinach: A study released by Freie Universitat Berlin suggests that ecdysterone, a chemical found in the leafy green vegetable, has a similar effect to steroids and should be added to the list of substances banned in sport, CNN affiliate RTL reported.

The researchers ran a study involving 46 athletes who trained three times per week for 10 weeks. Some were given ecdysterone and others a placebo. Those who took ecdysterone saw their performance improve by three times as much as those who did not...

Co-author Francesco Botre, director of the Italian anti-doping agency (FMSI), told CNN that the team are now investigating ways to test for ecdysterone. Anti-doping agencies are currently not allowed to test for ecdysterone because it isn't on the list of banned substances, he explained. This, combined with its greater than expected effect on performance, is a worry. "It's very powerful because it's invisible," said Botre. "It's not on the list."
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German Scientists Say Spinach Should Be Banned In Sports More

German Scientists Say Spinach Should Be Banned In Sports

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  • Also recommended for banning (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 29, 2019 @03:10PM (#58846580)

    Meat, water, fat, vegetables, carbs

    • Why does sports cheating even matter? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 29, 2019 @03:20PM (#58846650)

      Why does it even matter to stop cheating in sports?

      Even as an accomplished competitive athlete, I know that ultimately the outcome of any sporting match is quite irrelevant.

      Yeah, it may have some financial impact on the athletes, any team involved, and advertisers, but that's about it.

      Even those who follow sports religiously often couldn't tell you who was the champ 3 seasons or competitions ago.

      Let the athletes cheat. Let them do weird things to their bodies. Let them turn themselves into monsters. It will be much more entertaining for the spectators that way.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's right. This is such crap science. Subjects should have been tested with spinach, not "Mystery Aid X" directly. So what if it's in spinach, there might be other things there that severely limit its efficacy. But don't let that get in the way of chasing easy research cash.

      • Re:Also recommended for banning (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Kyr Arvin ( 5570596 ) on Saturday June 29, 2019 @04:30PM (#58846970)

        That's right. This is such crap science. Subjects should have been tested with spinach, not "Mystery Aid X" directly. So what if it's in spinach, there might be other things there that severely limit its efficacy. But don't let that get in the way of chasing easy research cash.

        The only reason to ban spinach is if it causes harm, not because it provides an advantage. Foods higher in protein help you rebuild your muscles faster, because that protein is what makes up the muscle, allowing you to recover faster from overwork or injury than you would from a low-protein diet. But no one is outlawing protein either, or workout shakes, or whey...

    • Re: Also recommended for banning (Score:5, Informative)

      by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Saturday June 29, 2019 @04:30PM (#58846972)

      All vitamins and minerals should be banned. And water. Or any water-like substance, as we know that hydration can lead to improved performance. And food!!! Obviously, those who eat are going to have better performance than those who do not eat.

    • Oxygen. I've noticed my personal performance improve exponentially when I breath, opposed to not breathing.
      • Oh, I thought of another one; sponsorship. Athletes and teams with heavy financial sponsorship also seem to perform better than the ones without. I don't think it's just a coincidence, it's clearly performance enhancing.

    • Exactly, just ban everything.

      There, problem solved. :-)

    • Meat, water, fat, vegetables, carbs

      And an anchor tattoo on your bicep.

    • Better yet, just don't ban or test for anything. Acknowledge athletes as being what they truly are: entertainers. Do we judge, suspend and ban other entertainers for substance use, or even abuse? Not unless they go full Lindsay Lohan, we don't. There's no post-Grammy-awards drug test where if Lady Gaga tests positive for pot, she gets her award taken away. There's no pre-or mid-tour drug test where if Keith Richards tests positive for being Keith Richards, he's suspended from the Rolling Stones' next

  • I disagree (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 29, 2019 @03:10PM (#58846588)

    Sincerely,

    Popeye

  • But they're easy opponents. (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday June 29, 2019 @03:13PM (#58846600)

    German Scientists Say Spinach Should Be Banned In Sports

    I like playing against spinach in most sports. While they're often crunchy, they're also soft and easily defeated.

    Or did you mean "eating spinach"?

  • POPEYE WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 29, 2019 @03:14PM (#58846614)

    Eat your spinach.

  • Read the article again (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 29, 2019 @03:16PM (#58846628)

    I think if you re-read the article, you'll note that they never said they wanted to ban spinach. To me, it looks like they only want to ban supplements containing high levels of one specific chemical substance contained in spinach. Eating normal amounts of spinach as part of a normal diet should be OK.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah not surprising CNN and by extension Slashdot (which does no editing at all) would get it wrong.

    • Eating normal amounts of spinach as part of a normal diet should be OK.

      Hopefully, nobody will be tempted to eat excessive amounts of spinach to boost performance. Since it has one of the highest concentrations of oxalic acid for a food, they could end up shredding their kidneys.

    • I think if you re-read the article, you'll note that they never said they wanted to ban spinach. To me, it looks like they only want to ban supplements containing high levels of one specific chemical substance contained in spinach. Eating normal amounts of spinach as part of a normal diet should be OK.

      Yeah, ends up the same thing. We have the same problem with other foods, any foods that contains things that could be abused as performance boosting is banned. They already can't eat anything with poppy seeds or drink anything with caffeine.

      Remember the tests are very sensitive in order to test if you used the drugs while training and not just while competing.

  • German scientists will want to ban bacteria [slashdot.org] too.

  • a good healthy vegetable that any athlete can eat has beneficial properties --> we must ban it

    or, all athletes could choose to eat a healthy diet including dark green veggies which includes spinach.

    geez... I think these German scientists should be made the receivers in a german shit eating porn as punishment

    • I suspect the scientist understands the disjoint of it all and is being tongue-and-cheek here. This wouldnt be the first naturally occurring performance enhancer to be banned.

  • I yam what I yam and tha's all what I yam." (Score:5, Funny)

    by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Saturday June 29, 2019 @03:23PM (#58846672) Journal

    It shouldn't be necessary to test for this supplement, since the unusally large forearms will be a dead giveaway.

  • Follow the money (Score:5, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Saturday June 29, 2019 @03:35PM (#58846740)

    Who funded this study?

    No surprise here: It was Bluto.

  • It is past the time to allow full "engineering" into the competition. We have arguments over what is male or female, what is an enhancement. Now they seem to be getting to banning common food items. Athletes sleep in higher oxygenation atmospheres, bank their own blood and many other things.

    We have admitted that this is the Anthropocene and that the world is heavily influenced by people.We are past the point where survival of fittest plays into our evolution but are rather fully supported by our intellect i

  • We knew this all along. Ask this guy [youtube.com] ... And more proof here [youtube.com].

  • Of for f*'s sake (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday June 29, 2019 @04:08PM (#58846888)
    No, spinach should not be banned. A chemical that happens to be found in spinach should be banned. This happens all the time in sports. Every few years they find a compound that works like a steroid but doesn't show up in the drug tests. Often times it'll show up as an over the counter supplement until the FDA gets around to finding out the (nasty) side effects and regulates it. Bud of mine's an ex weightlifter, and this has been going on since the 80s.

  • They should ban the she males who compete against proper women because they can't compete against proper men ? I don't really care about your choice of sexual partners or your identity but crossing the admittedly blurry gender lines for the point of competition is underhanded. In my opinion professional sports competitors should be able to take whatever they want in the pursuit of their 'craft'. Unfortunately that would trickle down to the college level, in order to be competitive, and that would then do th

    • Male, Female, Unlimited classes? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You could even have the unlimited classes tiered based on qualifying performance. Find out where there are sigificant dropoffs in the contestants times/distances/etc and split the groups up based off of it. Have a fully unlimited group at the top anyone can join without qualifying, and have the restrictions get tighter for the lower ranking groups so they are more competitive.

      There you go, now we have gender based competitions, as well as a non-binary solution for everyone else that provides multiple places

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      Now you did it. Grabbing popcorn while we wait on the SJWs.

  • and pot should be legal in sports as well

  • The paper itself [researchgate.net] isn't terribly novel; here's a similar study from 2012 with similar results [researchgate.net].

    The supplements used in this study were labeled* as 100mg of ecdysterone, which can be obtained by eating 1kg (2.2lbs, seven 5oz boxes) of spinach a day.

    * However, the study also states that they measured only 6mg in the over-the-counter supplements they were using. (It's ambiguous from the writeup, but) assuming the study actually tested only 6mg daily, that reduces the spinach equivalent to just half a box of

  • usual hyperbole headline (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 29, 2019 @05:02PM (#58847116)

    A little searching revealed that the athletes were given ecdysterone capsules with a potency equal to consuming around 4kg of spinach a day. So yeah good luck doing that without capsules. Essentially no one is lookng at banning spinach. fuck these stupid journalists.

  • I flies to the finish cause I eats my Spinach. I'm Popeye the sailor man. Is that a prophetic cartoon or what?

  • I can't find it right now, but I'm pretty sure I read a study about how athletes with diets high in bacon and doughnuts performed poorly against those with pretty much any other diet. Therefore, to maintain equality in sports, all athletes should be required to subsist on a high-fat, high-sugar diet. Also, lots of pre-packaged chips.

    It's only fair.

  • I used to be an athlete and I've completed on an international level. I also used to be in the WADA drug testing pool. This entire article reads as sensationalist bull. The fact is, the list of banned substances varies by sport, and the sports that this is applicable to may be very few. While it's cool to be able to bench press more, that's a bad predictor of any other useful gain. Likewise, it doesn't take much for people working out three times a week to see improvement from a small change. It's much dif

  • . transgender males competing with females and breaking their skulls.

  • But there is more substance in the topic. You can't prove a negative, and there are an infinite number of possible organic substances that have never been tested (or that could be synthesized for testing) that might have positive effects on athletic performances. The approach of listing the bad ones is fundamentally doomed to failure. No matter how many negative test results you have, you might be missing a crucial positive result that you didn't test for.

    Only solution approach I can come up with is a speci

  • Ask any 10 year old 'what is sports?' The answer will be about going out there and doing something invigorating with a ball or a puck among friends and neighbors. Ask an adult 'what is sports?' and the answer will be about sitting on a couch with beer & chips in front of a television. What's wrong with this picture?

    It's about money. Sports for grownups is a billion dollar entertainment industry, no better or worse than Hollywood. It plays on the vicarious feeling that watching grownups chasing a ball ar

  • But how many of you are old enough to even know who Popeye is?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      Easy, Robin Williams. More seriously, at 60, I've watched plenty of Saturday morning episodes.

  • Seems like the dose given in this study was 50mg. But a 2006 study which gave participants 30mg showed no significant differences. Wtf? https://jissn.biomedcentral.co... [biomedcentral.com]
  • Unlike synthetic steroids, spinach is just food. Food that's good for you anyhow. You ban steroids because they are a risky way to get an unfair advantage. Any athlete (I assume) can eat spinach with no kind of risk at all.

    In other words, it represents a completely fair advantage that can be recommended to everyone. Like working out or practicing.

    And even if the concern is specifically people using concentrated "supplements", so long as it's safe, cheap and equally available to all, what's the prob

  • This study would have been quite a surprise had it not been sold and advertised for at least 10 years (roughly the last time I bothered to look at supplements)! Have a look at what professional athletes are taking to avoid destroying their bodies over their long and intensive seasons though. It might be ethically dubious to take so many supplements (basically, drugs in many cases) but spectators are demanding ever higher levels of performance, far beyond normal levels of recovery.

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