THE GENERAL NUTRITION KNOWLEDGE OF PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES

Abstract

Proper nutrition and nutrition knowledge are necessary for health benefits both for general population and athletes, professional and non-professional ones. Of course, proper nutrition is not the same for all populations and should be adapted depending on gender, age, physical activity, health status and other needs. The physical condition, training and athletes’ success also depend on their diet. The aim of this study was to examine nutrition knowledge of professional athletes and compare it with the nutrition knowledge of their peers not professionally engaged in sports. This cross-sectional study was conducted with a specially designed anonymous questionnaire that was distributed to 211 participants (110 professional athletes and 101 non-athletes) by a specialist of occupational and sports medicine in Osijek, Eastern Croatia during September 2017. The median age of the participants was 20.0 years. There were 74.4% males and 25.6% females. The overall proportion of accurate answers among all participants was 27.6% with no statistically significant differences between professional and non-professional athletes as well as between females and males (p=0.584 and p=0.904, respectively). Likewise, there were no statistically significant differences in proportion of accurate answers regarding to educational level, socioeconomic status and body mass index (p=0.547, p=0.491, p=0.459, respectively). One participant (0.5%) had good nutritional knowledge, 9 (4.2%) had medium nutritional knowledge while most of the participants, 202 (95.3%), had poor nutritional knowledge with no statistically significant differences compared to whether they were professional athletes or not. According to the results in this study, the unsatisfactory level of nutrition knowledge is evident in both groups of participants. Obviously, additional education is needed how for professional athletes also as for non-professional ones