Centres eat twice as much as front-rows, says Munster nutritionist

Munster’s midfield maestros spend longest at the dinner table, according to Emma Tester, Lead Performance Nutritionist with Munster Rugby.

Ahead of Saturday’s visit to Edinburgh, the province have signed a three-year deal to make local café brand Zest its official food retailer.

Zest will provide, at no cost, a bespoke catering service to Munster that will include individualised meals for all squad sessions at the province’s High Performance Centre at UL as well as food packs for travel.

It will see up to 15,000 meals per annum supplied by the Shannon based company.

In the promotional video to launch the deal, Tester notes:

“They are supersized humans so the volume they have to eat is immense.

“Centres for example, eat an astronomical amount, almost double our front row which is a shocker, I think, to most people.”

Munster’s Head of Commercial and Marketing Doug Howlett added: “This is an excellent partnership for us at Munster Rugby and a very significant commitment by Zest!

"We have built a really strong relationship over the past 18 months and have been very happy with all elements of their operations.

"The modern athlete has very specific dietary requirements which vary from player to player and meeting that involves, apart from anything else, a complex logistics operation.

“Zest! has not alone been looking after those for some time now but the quality and taste has been exceptional.

"We also like their concentration on sourcing as much produce as they can locally, and that’s very much to our approval given the strong sense of community that Munster Rugby is built on.”