CHICKEN NUGGET FUEL
The Fast Food That Powers World Records
In the 1950s, a Cornell University professor named Robert C. Baker invented a product that is now well known, plentiful, and surprisingly impactful. No, it didn’t cure any disease or solve any major problems, but it did play a role in extending human performance beyond previous thresholds. The product? Chicken nuggets. A look at athlete Usain Bolt explains this surprising development.
Bolt is widely regarded as the world’s fastest man; as of 2018, he holds the world record in both the 100-meter and 200-meter dash. He set these records in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and also set a world record in his other event at this time—the 4-by-100-meter relay. And he did so with flair. Take the 100-meter final, for example. As the New Zealand Herald noted, “not only was the record set without a favorable wind (+0.0 m/s), but he also visibly slowed down to celebrate before he finished and his shoelace was untied.” Bolt won, and it wasn’t close.
His successes, however, were not a function of his nutrition—or perhaps they were. After the Olympic games, Bolt hired a well-known dietician named Leslie Bonci. Before Bonci began working with Bolt, she noted that he “had horrible eating habits.” Those habits included a distinct disinterest in trying the local cuisine of Beijing. In his 2013 autobiography, Faster Than Lightning, Bolt noted that he didn’t eat much, if any, Chinese food while in Beijing, finding it “odd.” Instead, he confessed to a fondness for Professor Baker’s invention. As detailed in Time magazine, Bolt’s 2008 Olympic diet was, by and large, Chicken McNuggets: “In the ten days Bolt spent in Beijing, he downed approximately 1,000 nuggets, averaging 100 a day. At 940 calories per 20-piece box, that means that Usain ate about 4,700 calories’ worth of Chicken McNuggets a day and 47,000 calories over the course of his stay in China.” “At first, I ate a box of 20 for lunch, then another for dinner,” Usain wrote in his autobiography. “The next day I had two boxes for breakfast, one for lunch and then another couple in the evening. I even grabbed some fries and an apple pie to go with it.” The end result? Three record-setting gold medals.
But please, don’t try this at home—and certainly not for the purpose of becoming the next Olympic champion. In 2012, a seventeen-year-old girl in the UK ended up in the hospital with severe anemia because her diet (since age two!) had centered around at least one meal of Chicken McNuggets per day. For a healthy lifestyle, it’s best to refer to the dietary recommendations of your doctor.