Nutrition knowledge and dietary practices of athletes

Abstract

The nutrition knowledge and practices of the athletes is important for their sports performance, muscle, and bone and teeth health. This study was held on the male professional wrestlers to find out the nutrition knowledge of the athletes with a mean age o f 16 (15-17) years. A questionnaire was applied, including questions about personal characteristics and dietary practices of the athletes, the general nutrition (18 questions) and the sports nutrition (12 questions) knowledge questions. The scoring was calculated from 30 questions having every correct answer being 1 point converted into 100points. Athletes get 59.7 points from the general nutrition, 63.9 points from the sports nutrition questions. The scoring o f the geıı eral nutrition knowledge was 6.4% lower than the scores of the sports nutrition knowledge. Totally, 55.8% and 78.3 % of the athletes replied wrong answers to the questions asking the basic energy source o f athletes and the basic functions o f the vitamins, respectively. It is found that the 58.0% o f the athletes believed that the vitamin and minerals maintain energy and 16.3 % o f the athletes did not know the foods maintaining calcium and 33.4 % o f the athletes answered wrongly the question asking the mineral for bone and teeth health, 30.2 % o f the athletes did not know that the calcium deficiency causes muscle spasm. While 42 (31.8%) of the athletes were skipping the meals, 15 (36.6%) of those were skipping breakfast, 19 (46.3%) of them were skipping lunch. To increase their performance 32 (24.8%) o f the athletes were using ergogenic aids and 35.0% and 15.0% o f them were using the vitamin mineral mixtures and protein powders, respectively. It was found that the athletes need to be educated on nutrition topics including basic nutrition and food groups by the experts on nutrition such as dietitians.