Eating right

Duk over at Big League Stew has a post that points elsewhere on the eating scale after the news about The Beast.

That post over at BLS has a link to a Wall Street Journal article that covers healthy eating in baseball in about the way that you would expect the Wall Street Journal to cover healthy eating in baseball:

Baseball's War Against Hamburgers
As Players Get Health Conscious, Teams Banish Clubhouse Junk Food; Edamame Anyone?

The doughnuts, fried chicken and candy bars that have long populated baseball's clubhouses—where players eat the majority of their meals—are being banished.

The Los Angeles Dodgers will ship their players to Arizona next week for a six-day health-food boot camp. The Kansas City Royals are planning to put up posters in the clubhouse offering nutritional advice. And the Philadelphia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays both say they're experimenting with the idea of preparing foods for the players that are rich in antioxidant grains like quinoa, teff and spelt.

At baseball's just-concluded winter meetings in Indianapolis, major and minor league strength and conditioning coaches devoted 12 hours on Saturday—about half of their total meeting time—to discussing matters such as including edamame and snow peas in the postgame buffet to whether teams should order "fun size" candy bars rather than the odious regular-sized variety.

"There's nothing wrong with a Reese's peanut butter cup every now and then," says Perry Castellano, the Minnesota Twins' strength and conditioning coordinator. "The issue is when somebody eats eight at a time."

This may seem like another case of paternalistic owners and team executives trying to maximize their multimillion-dollar payrolls. But in many cases, it's the players who are demanding healthier options: This past season, six members of the Los Angeles Angels approached the team's dietician, without prompting, to ask her to write them "food plans" to improve their diets. Heath Bell, a relief pitcher for the San Diego Padres, says he gets irritated on the road when teams set out buckets of cookies in the clubhouse while leaving the fruit and vegetables tucked away in refrigerators in side rooms. When teams do put fruit out, he says, they often don't even bother to clean or cut it. "If the fruit is out and set up well, I'll eat it," Mr. Bell says. "But if the cookies are there, I'm taking them. That's my downfall."

Awesome Del Amitri song, by the way.

Back to the story with something two things that might put you off your breakfast.

The baseball season doesn't do many favors for healthy eaters. Since games are mostly played at night, players generally eat late, go to bed late, sleep late and arrive at the ballpark in the early afternoon—sometimes before eating lunch. The players' Collective Bargaining Agreement actually requires that they receive $89.50 a day in meal money when the team is on the road, but many players pocket the money in favor of eating for free at the clubhouse. With 162 games per season, the volume of junk can add up in a hurry.

For decades, the clubhouse menu paid little attention to nutrition. Staples included steak, french fries, omelettes, bacon, and at least one gigantic tub of ice cream. In the 1930s, the Chicago Cubs served their players chipped beef for breakfast.

$89.50 a day????

Chipped beef for breakfast???

Where is that WSJ coverage...Oh, here it is.

One of the reasons junk food is so popular in baseball is because it's cheap. Cynthia Sass, a nutritionist for the Rays and Phillies, says organic foods cost up to 50% more than their regular counterparts. "It's a costly jump for teams to invest in good food," says the Padres' Mr. Malone.

My feelings on this move to healthy eating...which is embraced by the brewers at the minor league level, by the way...go ahead. More of the good-tasting stuff for me!