Plant-based power

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This article was published 15/09/2022 (1424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After flying in from Germany, Patrik Baboumian spent this past weekend in Winnipeg enjoying plant-based comfort food at Roughage Eatery on Sherbrook Street and speaking at Winnipeg VegFest, held at the University of Winnipeg on Saturday.

The retired strongman (and formerly Germany’s strongest man), perhaps best-known for his role in the popular documentary The Game Changers, has been vegan for more than a decade, meaning he does not consume any meat, dairy, eggs or fish. Today, the former meat-eating body builder is now on a mission to spread the message that you don’t need meat to be masculine and that being compassionate is a sign of strength.

Baboumian says he never planned on becoming an animal-rights activist, or even a promoter of plant-based eating and training.

“Strongman and other strength sports, that’s traditionally something where everyone thinks you need animal protein,” he says, admitting he followed the same notion for years.

But after giving up meat in 2005, then eventually all animal products in 2011, the well-decorated athlete then wanted to help others do the same. “I realized that at the strongman competitions, I could use that platform [to talk about meat-free training] when most of the other guys were big meat eaters,” he says. “When I would do interviews I would talk about my reasons [for not eating animals], and my main reason is really compassion. This was a decade ago, when there was still a popular idea amongst the population about masculinity — that compassion was something that goes against that.”

Following that media attention, Baboumian recalls, “Suddenly I was getting feedback from other young men, telling me that they were inspired by what I was doing, or even felt liberated to do the same. Because if the strongest man in the country can be compassionate, it kind of gave them the green light to also talk about these things.”

Baboumian credits improvements in his training after giving up meat for inspiring him to first enter strongman competitions. He says the strongest he’s ever been was five years into being vegan. But, he adds, it took a lot of self-education.

“There was nobody to tell me how easy it was” to train and compete on an entirely plant-based diet, he explains. “There was no blueprint.”

To that end, Baboumian created one, authoring two books in German and building online resources to help others learn. He notes that gaining a good understanding of basic nutrition, about macro and micro nutrients, is key for anyone starting a plant-based diet.

In a video posted to YouTube in 2019, Baboumian detailed what he ate in a typical day, starting with a protein shake containing 80 grams of plant protein, typically soy- or pea-based, as well as vegan creatine and beta-alanine supplements. After training, he then had a fruit smoothie, again with more plant protein and supplements.

For lunch, Baboumian prepared fresh tomatoes, falafel, plant-based sausages, oven fries and a pile of roasted vegetables. Yet another protein shake is downed before dinner, followed by a soymilk cappuccino. Then for his final meal of the day, he cooked up veggies in a curry sauce, potatoes and two blocks of tofu, all roasted. The athlete ended his day with a big bowl of peanuts, containing 50 grams of protein, and another protein shake, bringing his daily protein count to a whopping 410 grams of plant protein in total.

Through his education journey, Baboumian says he also learned the connection between masculinity, athleticism and meat-eating is deeply rooted in culture, not biology, he says. “The majority of the population does what the baseline culture dictates; they don’t question their mainstream culture.”

But Baboumian question it, and believes it was his own multicultural background — growing up as part of the Christian minority in Iran before moving to Germany and “basically learning three cultures” — that helped. “It helped me question culture and tradition,” which are human-made, he explains, “not based on science.”

Ultimately, Baboumian says that although being vegan did greatly improve his performance as an athlete, that was just a bonus. “It was always about the animals,” he says, “about aligning my actions with my values.”

Baboumian also believes that being someone of great physical strength comes with great responsibility. “You have to use your power to protect, and being vegan is one of the ways you can do that on a really universal level. Because you are protecting nature, you are doing something better for social justice — you are having a positive effect on other human beings, a positive effect on the planet, a positive effect on your own health, and of course for all the animals you are not consuming.”

At the end of his talk at Winnipeg VegFest, Baboumian used a yoke placed on his upper back to lift four audience members and a dog off the ground. Though he may consider himself to be retired, it’s obvious Baboumian’s plant-based power remains.