Cycling star, Mark Cavendish is backing a new National Lottery campaign, The Food Champions, which shares the eating habits and refuelling secrets of our leading athletes with fitness enthusiasts and people who play sport at all levels.

The Food Champions has been developed with nutritionists from the English Institute of Sport (EIS), which works with more than 30 Olympic and Paralympic sports, and takes the principles of elite athletes’ dietary regimes and applies them to everyday lifestyles – www.thefoodchampions.com.  

Forty healthy, delicious, nutritionally balanced and easy to prepare recipes are being promoted by the EIS and The National Lottery, which funds more than 1,300 athletes across the UK and contributes to funding of the EIS.

Mark, from Douglas, Isle of Man, who won a gold medal in the Madison team event at the 2016 UCI World Track Cycling Championships has even had a recipe named after him: Cav's Mountain Climb Cherry, Fig & Almond Flapjack. The snack helps to provide vital fuelling for cyclists during rides.

The recipes focus on eight sports and are designed to deliver the necessary ‘nutritional outcomes’ that food needs to provide to help athletes improve performance in those sports.

Mark, says expert eating advice can give athletes a competitive advantage as he aims to compete for gold in the Rio Olympics later this year:

“It is an unusual honour and a bit of fun to have a recipe named after me! I hope it will encourage sports fans to take a look at the website and to understand why what they eat matters. Funding from National Lottery players allows The English Institute of Sport to fine tune our performance. Now everyone who loves sport can benefit from Lottery-funded advice to improve their own sporting performance and to stay healthy.”

Dr Kevin Currell, Head of Performance Nutrition at the English Institute of Sport, said: “Food is a vital part of an elite athletes training programme and has the power to impact positively on performance. Athletes’ diets are designed to suit the specific demands of their sport and ensure the food and drinks they consume contribute to the delivery of the ‘nutritional outcomes’ they need to achieve to support their training regime.

“This principle can be applied to the eating habits of anyone who does sport and the recipes developed for this campaign are designed to deliver the relevant nutritional outcomes necessary for each of the eight sports. It aims to make the scientific expertise we apply to elite athletes accessible to a much wider audience and give the public an opportunity to learn from the eating habits of Olympic and Paralympic athletes and integrate some of these tips into their own dietary and training regimes.”