No meat: Lucho Acosta explains his unusual diet

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·25 marzo 2026

No meat: Lucho Acosta explains his unusual diet

Midfielder Lucho Acosta goes much of the year without eating one of the specialties of his home country’s cuisine: meat. Although he enjoys barbecue and other typical dishes made with it, the Argentine adopted a diet without this protein while playing for Atlas (Mexico), between 2020 and 2021.

In an exclusive interview with TV Globo, the Fluminense player explained why.

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Meat has a lot of clenbuterol, and the team doctors (at Atlas) said we couldn’t eat meat two days before a game. So I got used to it. I felt good, felt like I rested better, recovered better. I started telling my family to stop eating meat. We stopped. During the season, I started following this diet. I make up for it with other proteins,” Acosta said.

The restriction on meat lasts for about 11 months, that is, the period when he is playing.

When the season ends, when I’m on vacation and go back to Argentina, then it’s hard. I eat a little meat when I get to Argentina, my father waits for me with a barbecue (laughs). But I try not to eat it,” he said.

Clenbuterol: what is it?

The substance is used in the respiratory treatment of horses, but it is banned in sports and can appear irregularly in meat when used to speed up animals’ lean mass gain.

Even unintentionally, the presence of clenbuterol in the body can result in severe punishments for athletes. The most emblematic case happened at the 2011 FIFA U-17 World Cup, when more than 100 players tested positive after consuming contaminated meat in Mexico.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.