Catering for athletes : food and nutritional considerations at international athletics championships

• Autor(a) principal: Baeta, Inês Isabel Palaio Maldonado
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/160373
• topic: Catering; Competion Events; Dietary Planning; Nutrition Labels; Sport; Sports Nutrition; Ciências Médicas

Food provision during international sports competitions is a very demanding task and requires the management of different needs and expectations. To the best of our knowledge, few studies have explored this subject, particularly in athletics. Therefore, kn owing athletes and athlete support personnel opinion regarding catering and nutrition during European Athletics Championships is pertinent. Thus, we aimed to study (i) what influences athletes’ food choices and their opinion on the food provision during the 2019 Under 20 (U20) and Under 23 (U23) European Athletics Championships, and (ii) athletes and athlete support personnel opinion concernin g nutrition labels provided during the 2022 European Athletics Championships. For the first study, all athletes over 18 years old competing at the 2019 U20 and U23 European Athletics Championships were invited to participate in the study. For the second st udy, all athletes and athlete support personnel participating at the 2022 European Athletics Championships, over 18 years old, were invited to participate. Both study protocols were approved by the Ethical Committee of NOVA Medical School 57/2019/CEFCM and 70/2022/CEFCM. At the 2019 U20 and U23 European Athletics Championships we collected 339 questionnaires (57% males, median age 19.6 years old). Factors that may impact performance (time of the day and nutrient composition), but also temperature of the food, were rated as important and very important by a higher percentage of athletes (78%, 74% and 72% respectively) compared to the presence of team mates (32%) and the coach (23%). At the 2022 European Athletics Championships, we collected 2 80 questionnaires (54% males, medi an age 27 years old); 78.9% of the participants were athletes and 21.1% were athlete support personnel. Nutrition labels were used by 38.8% of the participants occasionally, and were considered important (41.0%) or very important (28.4%) by most participan ts, and almost all participants (91.7%) would like to have nutrition labels in future championships. Most participants were confident (41.9%) or moderately confident (31.3%) in making food choices because they had nutrition labels. In conclusion altogether, the results from these two studies during three major sports events highlight that an effective dialogue between competition organizers, nutritionists and caterers, is crucial. Overall teams experience with the food and nutrition labels provision at these championships was positive however more studies regarding catering for athletes are needed.