This is a great observation.

“…the performance requirements set by the federations at the elite level of sport almost demand access to certain “banned substances” in order to assure the health and vitality of the athlete throughout his or her career and – more importantly – into his or her life after competition.”

This is especially true in “extreme sports” like endurance events where the extreme demands of the sport itself often compromises the health of the athlete.

I strongly disagree with this statement. PEDs are relatively inexpensive – certainly significantly less expensive than optimum nutrition.

It is drug testing that has potentially disadvantaged poor athletes because the readily available inexpensive PEDs are banned creating the market for designer steroids (afforded by affluent athletes).

In addition, “rich” athletes can afford extensive monitoring to bypass detection of their use of PEDs in a drug-tested system. This potentially disadvantages poor athletes.

So,ultimately permitting PEDs in sports will help poor athletes.

I couldn’t disagree more with this! Over the past 15 years while working out at various commercial gyms, I’ve come in contact with dozens if not hundreds of people who were using more PEDs than any Olympic-caliber athlete.

It takes infinitely more than anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs to make an elite athlete. A chemist has never created a drug that could remotely accomplish such a feat and most likely never will.

As for fiber in the diet, it is over-hyped by the media. We don’t actually need that much fiber, beyond what we get from consuming a few fruits and vegetables each day and provided we don’t consume processed foods. The notion that we need “whole grains” for the fiber effect is total BS.

Back to Mark’s suggestion that athletes should be allowed to use medication to ensure they get the maximum benefit from training or minimise the damage, let me give you a very pertinent example – the Tour de France. Under TdF rules, asthmatics certified by their doctors are permitted to take certain substances which for non-asthmatics could be considered as performance-enhancing. Guess what – over 25% of all TdF cyclists are certified asthmatics !!