I don’t like salads: I like the strong food.

On its face, Seles’s remark is a blunt, humorous rejection of the stereotypical “athlete diet” of light, virtuous foods. By contrasting “salads” with “strong food,” she frames eating not as restraint but as fuel—suggesting a preference for hearty, satisfying fare associated with strength, stamina, and pleasure. The line also plays into her public persona as candid and unpretentious: a champion willing to puncture expectations with a simple, relatable confession. Read more broadly, it can be taken as a small defiance of performative health culture—valuing what feels sustaining over what merely signals discipline.