> Says who? Footballers eat a ridiculous amount of calories

Science? Nutritionist? Not some dude on reddit eating happy meals for dinner.

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>Good fats include monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Bad ones include industrial-made trans fats. Saturated fats fall somewhere in the middle.
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>All fats have a similar chemical structure: a chain of carbon atoms bonded to hydrogen atoms. What makes one fat different from another is the length and shape of the carbon chain and the number of hydrogen atoms connected to the carbon atoms. Seemingly slight differences in structure translate into crucial differences in form and function.
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>Monounsaturated fats have a single carbon-to-carbon double bond. The result is that it has two fewer hydrogen atoms than a saturated fat and a bend at the double bond. This structure keeps monounsaturated fats liquid at room temperature.
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>A polyunsaturated fat has two or more double bonds in its carbon chain. There are two main types of polyunsaturated fats: omega 3 and 6 fatty acid.

source: harvard

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you're getting a lot less out of fast food and fill up more of the quotas in comparison to lean foods. this is why footballers have the stereotype of just eating boiled chicken. They burn so much calories they want to maximise the intake of nutrition and the volume of food because they get hungry quickly.

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>• Caffeine is football’s favourite prematch supplement. It improves physical, cognitive and technical performance (including passing accuracy), according to Sports Nutrition for Football, a booklet published by Barcelona’s “Innovation Hub”. The guide recommends tea or coffee at pre-training breakfast, and caffeinated sports drinks on match days.
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> • High-fibre vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts should be eaten twice a week but — given that they are gassy and take time to digest — not immediately before taking the field, Barça advise.
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>• Beetroot juice boosts nitrate levels, though not everyone likes it. The conference was shown a video of a Benfica player downing a shot, grimacing and washing the taste away with water.
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>• A player with a high workload needs lots of carbs. If he doesn’t have a high workload (perhaps because he’s injured), lots of carbs will make him fat. If teams insist on consuming their prematch carbs as pasta, they should eat it al dente, quite hard, as soft-cooked pasta will cause players’ sugar levels to surge and then fall; and don’t add butter or cheese. But sweet potato is preferable, says French sports nutritionist Thomas Rozé.
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>• Inflammation of body tissues tends to increase over the season. February to the end of May is the period Barcelona define as “high competition”, with lots of matches, travel and sleep loss. In this phase, players should ramp up anti-inflammatory foods such as broccoli, cherries and bone broth rather than taking football’s traditional painkilling drugs.
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> • The protein recovery shake after training, often personalised for each player, has become a football ritual. • Within an hour of a match ending, players should eat proteins to help damaged muscle fibres recover. The body is most receptive to nutrients immediately after exercise. Importantly, too, postmatch is a time when the club have some control over what their players consume. That is why Juventus have a dining table in their home changing room, while away sides often depart the stadium in a team bus equipped with a quality kitchen complete with top-class chef.

source: financial times

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there are reasons why even sumo wrestlers aren't just shoving big macs down their throats to get big.

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so yeah, cap.