Before sports drinks, energy bars and carbohydrate-loading, there were figs, cheese and dates, simple fare for the Olympic athletes of ancient Greece. But during the past century of the modern Olympics, nutrition science and the Games have grown in sophistication as the world's elite athletes and their trainers looked for new ways to achieve ultimate performance. Two UC Davis nutritionists have examined this relationship. "Diet and training were issues for athletes even in antiquity," says Louis Grivetti, a UC Davis professor of nutrition. "But during the 20th century we have witnessed amazing advances in athletic training, diet and nutrition, and sports medicine." Grivetti has focused his recent studies on the past century of medical, nutritional and physiological research related to the Olympics, with special attention to the research conducted on athletes at the 1936 Berlin games. His colleague, UC Davis nutrition lecturer Elizabeth Applegate, has explored the dietary fads used through the centuries by athletes. Applegate, an award-winning triathlete and author of the book "Power Foods," contrasts historical accounts of dietary fads with scientific data on a range of products and dietary supplements used by modern elite athletes. Grivetti and Applegate spoke recently on their work during Experimental Biology '96, an international scientific meeting in Washington D.C.