Beef hearts and livers. These are the natural proteins that are part of the Norwegian footballer’s diet Erling Haaland on a regular basis. Nutrition experts agree: it is the animal meat that their Viking ancestors ate naturally.
The striker acknowledged that he frequently consumes cow livers and hearts in the documentary about his figure entitled The Big Decisionin which his deep interest in everything related to his nutrition is confirmed.
In the report, the athlete confirms his taste for cow offal and tries to confront the theories that criminalize the consumption of meat and call it harmful: “People say that meat is bad but… Which one? The meat you eat at McDonald’s or the local grass-eating cow? I eat heart and liver because they are rich in B vitamins, iron, phosphorous, copper and magnesium.”
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The heart and liver of a cow are pieces of meat called “offal”. Although they are currently less and less common foods in the Mediterranean diet, in our country they were commonly consumed in times of economic scarcity, as were other pieces such as tripe, brains, sweetbreads or offal, all of them with a high protein content.
The nutrition experts consulted indicate this type of food does provide great benefits for the body of an elite athlete with high demands. In addition to the high protein and iron content, these viscera are rich in amino acids and help in the body’s production of collagen.
The diet chosen by Erling Haaland is also due to the customs of his Viking ancestors. Eating and digesting this type of food well is part of the Norwegian culture. “Haaland is a person of Nordic origin, and at an ancestral level his ancestors have been consuming these products naturally for a long time,” he says in The Spanish the sports nutritionist Roger Barrull.
Nutritional experts advise against eating this type of food on a daily basis because they are excessively rich in vitamin A and E, and eating them in excess has a high risk of toxicity. “The viscera are not an essential food nor are they going to make anyone a better athlete, so I would recommend eating it once a month at most,” they say.
Viking scoring force
The Manchester City striker arrived last summer at the team of Pep Guardiola in exchange for 60 million euros from Borussia Dortmund. The Nordic is coming out more than profitable for the English team; he has 22 goals with only 17 games played, 17 of them in the Premier League including three hattricksand another five goals in the Champions League.
The highest paid footballer in the Premier League is a giant of 194 centimeters tall capable of reaching any impossible ball in the area. The key is in his hard training and feeding him. Haaland, 22, eats up to six meals a day and his compatriot Josh King He has already said on occasion that, “he eats like a bear”.
His concentration on achieving maximum performance as a footballer does not only come from training and diet. When Haaland was 18 years old and playing for Borussia Dortmund he had asked a young Norwegian girlfriend to return to his country, home, as he wanted to concentrate on his sporting work.
Born in Leeds, United Kingdom, but of Norwegian origin, he is the son of fellow footballer Alf-Inge Håland and he has an older brother and a little sister who is a military man in his country. This great scorer has claimed on occasion that the “many girlfriends” he has and with whom he sleeps every night are his balls.