Nutrition and Bodybuilding

In the last century, the sport of bodybuilding has had a strong impact 

upon entertainment, sports, and the medical community. Such pop culture icons as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno have transformed the sport into what it is today. At the same time, the sport has catapulted these and others who have followed into the media and entertainment world spotlight. Bodybuilding has given new ideas as to what a healthy body and a healthy state of mind consists of. The sport of bodybuilding has ignited medical research of all kinds relating to body mechanics, nutrition, and supplementation. Nutrition, in addition to supplements, is essential to bodybuilding. 

Bodybuilding has not been around forever. The Greek culture was the first culture to idolize the idea of an aesthetically beautiful, strong, muscular physique capable of great feats (Schwarzenegger 3). These ideals resurfaced at the end of the nineteenth century as the people of the era began to show new interest in weightlifting and the celebration of the human body (Schwarzenegger 3). This was, in part, due to health problems which created a desire to eat a balanced diet and develop the human body, and also because Europe and America had a fascination with strongmen and the feats they performed as entertainment (Schwarzenegger 3).