Ultra-marathoners ditch their healthy diets during races, subsisting on chips, Coke, and Twinkies. The strategy reveals a nasty truth about processed food.

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The Badwater 135 ultramarathon is a 135-mile run through Death Valley, where the highest temperatures ever recorded on Earth have been logged.
Business Insider recently spoke to two of this year’s finishers, who spent more than 33 hours awake to complete the race.
Both runners said they relied on junk food during the race, including potato chips, Coke, McDonald’s hashbrowns, and Pop Tarts.
The strategy makes sense for extreme athletes when they’re racing, but it also reveals a nasty truth about processed food: It enters our bloodstream super-fast and can make us eat more.
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The Badwater ultramarathon is billed as the "world’s toughest foot race."

Competitors run 135 miles without sleep through the arid, hilly, and devilishly hot Death Valley, where the highest temperatures ever on Earth — 134 degrees Fahrenheit — were recorded in 1913.

"It was definitely one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done," Annie Weiss, a first-time Badwater finisher who completed 28 other ultramarathons before this one, told Business Insider.

Caryn Lubetsky, who also completed Badwater for the first time this year, agreed.

"I’ve raced 100 miles up and down the mountains in Arizona. I have pulled a quadriplegic through 400 miles of triathlon. But this particular race challenges you in so many different ways," Lubetsky said. (She holds a Guinness World Record for "most triathlons hauling another person in a month.")

In order to reach the Badwater finish line, both women didn’t just train hard, they also ate lots of junk food on the course.

Weiss, a registered dietician, said she abandons her usual healthy diet of vegetables and whole grains during an ultramarathon like Badwater, and eats candy and fast food instead. Because despite processed food’s bad reputation, it’s surprisingly good fuel for a long race, since it provides sugar that an athlete’s body can quickly convert into glucose (energy).

"It’s already processed when we put it in our body," Weiss said of her race-day staples, which include packaged snack cakes like Twinkies, fruit snacks, and donuts. "Our body has one less thing that it has to do to that food so, essentially, we’re saving energy."

Other endurance athletes follow a similar pattern: Appalachian Trail record holders like Karl Meltzer and Karel Sabbe completed that 2,190-mile course in record time on diets of beer, pizza, potato chips, and candy.

But quick-acting characteristics of these foods that make them ideal race-day snacks are also the reason why they’re bad for us when consumed on a regular basis. A wealth of scientific evidence has shown that relying on processed foods leads to weight gain over time, and that people who eat more of these foods tend to get more cancer and die quicker than people who rely on fresh vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats like olive oil.

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Ultramarathoners eat junk, but the strategy makes sense

Like Weiss, Lubetsky eats pretty healthy at home. But her Badwater dit was "really gross," she said: Lubetsky subsisted on Pop Tarts, peanut-butter-filled pretzels, Fig Newtons, and frozen fruits like bananas, oranges, and grapes.

"I’m very controlled in what I eat normally, but when I race like this, it’s like you just eat whatever you want, and it’s so much fun," she said.

She never ate a large quantity of these snacks at once, though.

"For me, the best thing to do is to eat small bits every half an hour or so," Lubetsky said. "Then my body never really has to work to digest it, and I don’t have to divert blood from my muscles to my GI tract."

Similarly, Weiss said she snacked on fast food during the race: "hashbrowns from McDonald’s, burgers from McDonald’s, pizza from Pizza Hut."

"There’s a time and a place for processed foods and in sports, you know, that’s the time to have it," Weiss said. "We want that to get into our bloodstream right away and to be able to use it. That’s the time that those simple sugars really matter."

Simple sugars are normally a nutritionist’s nemesis. They hide everywhere in our modern diets, including in salad dressings, flavored yogurts, muffins, and boxed cereals. But they slide through our digestive system and enter the bloodstream more rapidly than whole, unprocessed foods like fresh produce, seeds, nuts, fungi, algae and animal products.

Human bodies convert these simple sugars into energy first, because it is far easier (and faster) to turn simple carbs into glycogen than to wait for more complex carbohydrate structures to transform into usable energy, or to metabolize fat into ketone bodies. This is why fast food and candy can send our blood sugar soaring and leave us hungry and cranky soon after we eat.

Both runners also drank soda during the race

Weiss said the sugars in her road snacks accomplish the same goal as expensive performance foods like energy gels and sports drinks.

"Why have a gel? I mean, the Twinkie tastes better," she said. "If you’re going have something processed, at least have something that tastes good."

While running through the desert, the women also needed to stay cool and hydrated. Weiss stuffed ice cubes in her cap and carried 24 ounces of water with her at all times.

"I was sweating the whole time," she said. "That’s a good clue that you’re hydrating well."

Getting enough salt to help stave off dehydration was important too, so both runners ate "a lot, a lot of chips," Weiss said.

She ate the pickle-flavored kind — so many that she said her tongue turned green — while Lubetsky opted for plain Ruffles.

In addition to water, Weiss consumed a variety of caffeinated and sugary drinks: chocolate milk, electrolyte fluids, a lemon-lime slushie from a gas station, sweetened iced coffees, orange juice, and her personal favorite, Mountain Dew.

"It’s a nice, easy caffeine source, calorie source, bubbles, hydration, you know, it’s giving you a little piece of everything," she said.

Lubetsky preferred Coke, and also used electrolyte drink tabs. But she brought a stash of toothbrushes to Badwater, too.

"You just feel so disgusting and gross, all of that sugar kind of fermenting in your mouth," she said.

‘All of that sugar’

Weiss knows the processed-food strategy is controversial, though. Plenty of other athletes don’t follow it — world-record-holding ultramarathoner Scott Bitter prefers a high-fat low-carb diet, for example — since processed foods are inflammatory.

"Well, so is running!" Weiss said. "What I’ve noticed from my experience as an athlete, and then from my coaching of other athletes on sports nutrition, is processed foods — they go in and they help you exert energy right away."

Part of the reason that whole foods like veggies, beans, and oats are consistently connected to better health outcomes is that they take longer to digest, so keep people full until their next meal.

By comparison, sugar in processed foods can be quickly turned to fat in the liver and contribute to diabetes, insulin resistance, more belly fat, cancer, heart issues, and even early death when consumed consistently over time. Liquid sugars — like Coke, Mountain Dew, and juice — are the leading source of sugar in American diets, and they’re some of the most dangerous. These sugars enter our blood streams more rapidly than the ones in food, sending blood sugar soaring and even prompting fat deposits in our arteries that, over time, can lead to heart attacks.

In fact, studies show that drinking sugar is associated with an increased risk of death from any cause, something that’s not true of all added sugar in food.

Rich Perry

It’s clear that the ultramarathon fueling strategy Lubetsky and Weiss used should not be part of any long-term diet regimen. Now that the race is over, both women are back to their regular, healthy eating routines.

"I am not sure I’ll ever drink Mountain Dew again," Weiss said.

NOW WATCH: What happens to your body during an ultramarathon

Source: Business Insider – hbrueck@businessinsider.com (Hilary Brueck)