NFL superstar Tom Brady recently went on a local Boston radio show for his weekly appearance. The New England Patriots Quarterback in his interview was defending his business partner and “body coach” Alex Guerrero, who has been with Brady for a decade, but has had a controversial past.
“So much of what we talk about, Alex and I, is prevention,” Brady said in his interview. “It’s probably a lot different than most of the Western medicine that is kind of in a way you — I’d say in professional sports, or in any sport in general, you kind of just play the game until you basically get hurt. Then you go to rehab and then you try to come back and you try to play your sport again. And I think so much for me and what we try to accomplish with what my regimen is, and what my methods are, and the things of my belief system, is trying to do things proactively so that you can avoid getting injured.
Brady then talked about eating healthy and called out Coca-Cola.
“I’ve really stepped outside the box in the way that I try to, like I said, train, eat, hydrate, the cognitive brain games that I play on a daily or weekly basis to try to build up some durability within my body, within my brain, to be able to go out there and play at a high level at 38,” he said. “Now you guys may think I’m full of crap, but the proof is what you see on the field. That’s what I say. I try to encourage all my teammates. And I sure hope someday that all athletes … get the same level of care that I get, because you can play for a long period of time without having knee replacement, without having all the major head trauma that people are dealing with based on the systems that have been in place for a long period of time that have never changed. So you need to start thinking outside the box if you want to do something different.
“When you think about nutritional supplements you think about other types of training methods and training techniques. I think that’s a great thing. I think when you talk about a green supplement — it’s vegetables. It’s eating better. So much of my diet is based on an acid-alkaline principle, which to me does reduce inflammation in my body. When you run around and take hits all day for a living, that’s a really positive thing for me. I would love to encourage all my teammates to eat the best way they possibly can, to have high school athletes [do the same].
“That’s not the way our food system in America is set up. It’s very different. They have a food pyramid. I disagree with that. I disagree with a lot of things that people tell you to do. You’ll probably go out and drink Coca-Cola and think, ‘Oh yeah, that’s no problem.’ Why? Because they pay lots of money for advertisements to think that you should drink Coca-Cola for a living? No, I totally disagree with that. And when people do that, I think that’s quackery. And the fact that they can sell that to kids? I mean, that’s poison for kids. But they keep doing it. And obviously you guys may not have a comment on that because maybe that’s what your belief system is. So you do whatever you want, you live the life you want.
Brady then called out Frosted Flakes.
“I think we’ve been lied to by a lot of food companies over the years, by a lot of beverage companies over the years. But we still do it. That’s just America, and that’s what we’ve been conditioned to. We believe that Frosted Flakes is a food. … You just keep eating those things, and you keep wondering why we have just incredible rates of disease in our country. No one thinks it has anything to do with what we put in our body.”
For a more full look into this situation click this story by the radio station that Brady was on and this CNNMoney article. In the latter article Frosted Flake’s maker Kelloggs responded to Brady.
If you want more information on sugar’s effect on the human body, take a look at this interview with Dr. Marion Nestle, who talks about her book, Soda Politics.