Alistair Overeem eats horse?

K-1 and Dream fighter Alistair Overeem has undergone a fighting Renaissance winning four of his last five bouts, the fifth was a no contest. All the while rumors permeated as to whether Overeem was headed to the UFC. 

Critics of Alistair pointed to the noticeable changes in his body over the years and assumed steroids. After all, there isn't any steroid testing in Japan, where Overeem has fought the majority of his bouts. 

But the changes in Overeem's physical prowess has nothing to do with performance enhancing drugs. It is in fact due to a change of diet. Alistair Overeem now eats horse meat. 

That's right horse meat. 

One more time, I am not making this up. HORSE MEAT. 

Robert K sent me this translation of a recent interview with Croatian sports magazine Index.hr.

You've come a long way in past two years. What have you changed?

I changed my diet, I changed my coach and when I really think about it - I changed everything. From my girlfriend to my training and diet. Before I ate a lot of vegetables that are healthy but contained little energy. Now I mainly eat a horse meat, rice and protein shakes. I got rid of my old coach who was in charge of my fight strategies. It simply wasn't working. I just started to think about what do I had to do to become a better fighter.

Maybe the horses Overeem eats are the ones that didn't win the Kentucky Derby but are pumped full of Winstrol anyways. 

Now in the interest of fairness I know nothing of Croatian language and am trusting Robert on this one. But because I don't want to just depend on Rob I checked out as much as I could using internet Croatian to English translators. And it does indeed say 'horse meat'. 

I don't want to be too insensitive to other cultures and eating horse is not that taboo in other places in the world. But how could you do this to Barbaro!