Back in 1927, the London soccer club Arsenal signed a rather weedy and fragile young player, Eddie Hapgood. The game was brutal back then, and the team’s trainer got the 19-year-old into weight training and convinced him to give up his vegetarian diet. Hapgood became known for his physique and went on to captain both his club and England’s national team.
Whether it was the workouts or the meat that turned Hapgood from weakling to “man mountain” defender is debatable, but a popular belief persists—not totally unsupported by science—that humans need animal protein to perform at their best.
