Health food at tournaments.

[Philosophical One]

I hope this is the correct place to post this.

I usually work in the canteen at tournaments and I'm also responsible for buying the food...

I have just continued on in the tradition of my predecessors - sausages bread, chips and chocolate, soft drinks...

But I really hate serving junk to athletes at athletic events.

What do other clubs do?

Does everyone do the same?

[bushido_man96]

Perhaps having some fruit on hand, like bananas and apples, would be more in your direction. Perhaps some granola bars or power bars, and drinks like Gatorade and Powerade would be good, too.

I understand your dilema; serving junk at an athletic event does seem contrary to the purpose of the event.

[Zanshin]

If you are competing in all day events then eating junk food is the worst thing you can do.

If I know I have a long event coming up, I usually have a good rice or pasta meal the day before to store up slow release carbohydrates, then during the day eat lightly. Fruit like bananas are a very good source of energy, they also contain potassium which reduces the risk of muscle cramp.

Also drink plenty of fluid, the right type (I don’t know anything about "Gatorade" but if its mass produced, it may not be that good for you) a lot of the guys drink SIS electrolyte drink, which is a carbohydrate drink, and very fast working.

A lot of cyclists and marathon runners use it.

You can improve your performance enormously by just eating and drinking the right thing at the right time.

[lordtariel]

Healthy options are always preferred by me, but you also have to remember that those sorts of products are more expensive. I'd slowly integrate healthy options and see how they sell.

[Philosophical One]

Yeah I'm thinking about baked beans, fresh fruit and yogurt. But I'm open to ideas.

Salads are probably out of the question- too much prep time.

Just about every other tournament I've been to does things the unhealthy way - but one time I attended a weekend Black Belt grading where they had fruit salad and yogurt for everyone.

[Clash]

I'd stick with like some simple fruits (apples, Banana's, grapes, etc) and yogurt cups. Maybe if those went over well you could consider some other healthy snacks like Whole grains in the form of pretzel's of little packs of gram crackers (you can NEVER go wrong with chocolate gram crackers.). Yo could also consider packages of peanuts and sunflower seeds, or some dairy int he form of cheese sticks.. and by those I don't mean the greasy baked kind you order with pizza, something more like this. http://www.horizonorganic.com/products/cheese/sticks/index.html

This are rater simple ideas many of which have already been listed, or you've probably already thought of, but I figured I'd throw them out in case you overlooked any of them or wanted more imput.