Nutrition books for my favorite ballerina?

July 23, 2009 7:12 AM

What books/websites about nutrition would you recommend for a serious ballet student in her teens?

My beautiful and talented niece dances anywhere from 6-25 hours a week, depending on the season. In addition, she's 15 years old and still growing. Can you recommend any dance-specific resources for helping her maximize her food choices? (I say 'dance-specific' because if it's not, she will dismiss it outright.)

The family is looking around for nutritionists, but in the meantime, I'd like to try and find some kind of book/website/etc. for dancers that doesn't try to pass off a stalk of celery and a glass of water as lunch.

posted by corey flood to food & drink (4 comments total)

Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook is excellent, she considers dancers atheletes. I recall at least one case study in the book of a dancer, and ballet is mentioned specifically in each section on proteins, fats, etc. It's a fat book, but an easy read to teach about food components and timing meals for energy (glycemic index, etc.)- if she's 15 she might not know too much about it and in the meantime at least she'll learn the basics of what makes up a protein, a carb, a fat, etc.

No matter who she speaks to, she's going to find something wrong with the person- even if it is someone with a dance background, it'll be that they didn't study her style, they didn't succeed and are now working as a nutritionist, etc. Appeal to what makes sense to her; the scientific side of things, find an instructor willing to share good nutritional 'secrets', get her interested in making up her own meals/snacks or planning them.
posted by variella at 7:28 AM on July 23

I'm not trying to derail this discussion but I have a counter suggestion. I would advocate just pointing her towards descriptions of healthy eating habits practised by dancers and their kind.

An example of this would be this sentence out of a biography of Anna Pavlova -

As a ballet student, Pavlova adopted a strict diet with emphasis on fish and vegetables and followed the diet through her entire life.

I think an analytical focus on protein, fat, carbs, minerals, vitamins etc. etc. at that age can quickly lead to faddism and neuroticism. This is a charge I would generally apply to most 'pop' nutrition we are exposed to.

So yes, take her to see a good nutritionist, but if she starts trying to become her own nutritionist this can easily spiral out of balance. Instead she should just focus on good eating habits. These are very simply spelt out as Michael Pollan did in his book The Omnivores Dillema - "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." By food he means nothing your grandmother wouldn't recognise. If she eats sensibly like that, is surrounded by people who also set a good example and exercises 6-25 hours a week she won't need any other help.
posted by Sitegeist at 8:04 AM on July 23 [3 favorites]

I've heard good things about the Precision Nutrition system, but I've only recently started looking into it in earnest, so I'm not ready to endorse it quite yet. They have quite a bit of content available for free, so you could take a gander at it and see if it sounds like it would be a good program for your niece.
posted by zueod at 12:01 PM on July 23

Thanks, everybody. I'll check these books out.

Sitegeist, your advice is fantastic, and when she's a little older she'll be able to handle a plan for eating that relies on general common sense rather than on specifics. Unfortunately, this particular young lady is surrounded by fellow dancers who are setting a horrible example and I know her well enough to know that if she hears that Anna Pavlova was on a "strict diet," she's going to run with that idea to a place that no one wants her to go. ("But Pavlova lived on fish and vegetables!" "I think she ate more than four peas and a scrap of tuna, darling.")

Thanks again.
posted by corey flood at 4:07 PM on July 23