Manchester United’s Chris Smalling: “I’ve gone fully vegan”
Earlier this week, we wrote about Arsenal defender Héctor Bellerín’s vegan lifestyle and how it drastically improved his health. Now, Chris Smalling of Manchester United has joined the list of vegan football players.
According to the Daily Mail, Chris’s wife Sam “persuaded him to give up all kinds of meat, fish and dairy products, and switch to a plant-based diet of vegetables, nuts and fruit”:
“My wife has been vegan for a few years and was often trying to persuade me. She cooks a lot at home, and half the time I was eating vegan anyway.”
The defender noted that after cutting out red meat completely from his diet and going “fully vegan,” his tendinitis “started to go.” He also felt less sore after games with his recovery time accelerated. When asked what his main reason for going completely plant-based was, Smalling stated:
“The main reason I started was my health. At first, I was half and half so I was cutting out red meat but still eating some meat so I was getting a bit of both. But then the missus throws quite a lot of documentaries at you and it opens [your] eyes a little bit in terms of different industries and that persuaded me to go full vegan.”
Smalling added that while he still likes the taste of “steaks and chicken,” he doesn’t miss them “because there are so many different options now”:
“I thought I would miss it a lot more than I do, but was a lot easier to make the transition than I thought.”
Photo Credit: www.fcnaija.com
