I love learning about the eating habits of the best athletes in the world, to understand how top athletes fuel themselves for competition and daily life.
While researching, I was surprised to learn that LeBron James and Sidney Crosby eat the same thing — a peanut butter and jelly sandwich — just before games.
I started wondering if the habit extended among more professional athletes. The answer is a resounding yes.
It turns out that the peanut butter and jelly sandwich is the NBA’s secret addiction.
The PB&J was credited as the secret weapon of the 2007–08 Boston Celtics championship season, and then it quickly spread across the rest of the league. Now nearly every NBA team makes PB&J sandwiches readily available to their players.
The Milwaukee Bucks, for example, have been known to scarf down 20–30 PB&Js per game and travel with the ingredients.
It doesn’t stop with the NBA.
MLB legend Derek Jeter ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich an hour before every game and NFL star Rob Gronkowski downed a PB&J before all of his football games as well.
Notorious health fanatic Tom Brady — the greatest football player of all-time — also chooses this for his pre-game meal of choice. Although Brady opts for a…
