Red meat: Beef milks the energy out of other foods and gets it through to your muscles. The Department of Agriculture found 100g of beef - the equivalent of a slap-in-the-pan minute steak - gives you 17% of your RDA of vitamin B12 and 33% of B6. What do they do? Well, they release the oomph from carbs, with a study at Oregon State University, US, finding athletes who had sufficient levels of B vitamins had more energy for demanding sports. So next time you baulk at the price of beef, remember, it’s making the rest of your diet more effective.
White meat: You’ll get 197 calories from 100g of chicken meat which will give you more play than the measly 142 calories you’ll get from a 100g chunk of hide. Admittedly the fowl does have 2% less B vitamins than red meat but your energy supply will be revived with the extra 55 calories that make up for the bull’s calorie shortfall.
Muscle
Red meat: A 100g slab of steak give your hungry muscles 21g of protein which isn’t bad, but more is less with beef as your body can only absorb 74% of that in one sitting. You’ll enjoy eating it but over a quarter of the protein you’ve paid for will literally be flushed down the khazi.
White meat: Wing it for more muscle. Your body absorbs 80% of the protein in a chicken portion. Our feathered friends’ amino acids are also digested easier, too, which will help you build some wing-shaped lats of your own.
Recovery
Red meat: That 300g hunk of steak you scoff at your local gives you 90% of your RDA of zinc. A useful post-workout ally because endurance athletes were able to keep their immunity strong and fend off colds and illness when they kept their zinc levels up to scratch, found a study in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. Fight swine flu with your steak knife.
White meat: With 110mg of omega-3s, chicken weighs in with six times more of these beneficial fatty acids than beef. They’re a great post-workout performance booster because guys who took omega-3s and didn’t exercise improved their VO2 max by 4.5% more than those blokes who exercised but didn’t take the omega-3s, found a study at Western Washington University. This means you’ll do less huffing and puffing after your sprint and bedroom sessions, even if you finish one a lot quicker than the other.
And the winner is...
Chicken, for its superior muscle-building and recovery abilities. No bull.
Illustration: Bill McConkey