Supplemental Creatine, Not Dietary Creatine, Appears to Improve Exercise Performance
A recent review of the scientific research assessing creatine, published in the International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention, reports that while supplemental creatine can improve exercise performance, the same cannot be said for dietary creatine found in animal products, which also comes with health risks.
Creatine is synthesized by humans in the liver, kidneys, and pancreas, then transported for storage in the skeletal muscle. Additional creatine can be obtained through dietary sources, but only via the consumption of meat, fish and, to a lesser extent, eggs and dairy products.
The narrative review, co-authored by the GCI team, acknowledges that supplemental creatine has been consistently shown to boost the performance of high-intensity exercise. This has lead some to speculate that the dietary creatine found in animal foods may also provide a performance advantage. But research revealing discrepancies in creatine stores between individuals following omnivorous versus meat-free diets has not translated into differences in lean tissue mass, type I or II muscle fiber area, 1-rep max, bench press, leg press, power output, VO2max, time to exhaustion, or other indicators of exercise performance.
What’s more, creatine supplementation trials consistently produce performance enhancing effects for those following both omnivorous and meat-free diets, and have not consistently demonstrated greater improvements in those who avoid meat relative to those who consume it - providing further evidence that higher baseline creatine levels in omnivores do not offer a performance advantage.
The authors also highlight the differences in health risks between supplemental and dietary creatine. While supplemental creatine has been rigorously tested for its safety, the dietary creatine found in meat may be less benign. For instance, when meat or fish is grilled or pan fried, their creatine, amino acid and sugar contents react to form carcinogenic heterocyclic amines (HCAs). All the evidence combined led the authors to conclude that “sourcing creatine from supplements rather than food appears to be the safest, most effective method to consume creatine”.
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