Nutrition knowledge and practices among Palestinian athletes

Abstract

Athletes, who have sufficient knowledge on the importance of nutrition, attitudes and dietary habits, are believed to have better performance. The purpose of the current study is to determine the level of nutrition knowledge related to sports, to determine the nutrition information sources, and to explore the use of ergogenic supplementation among the study sample. In this descriptive study, athletes were required to fill out pretested questionnaire, which consisted of four parts including; socio-demographic and medical history, nutrition status assessment which included anthropometric measurements, dietary practices, ergogenic supplementation use, and developed nutrition knowledge questionnaire. The statistical analysis was done using descriptive analysis, Cronbach Alpha was used to determine the reliability of questionnaire. Independent t-test and ANOVA were done to determine the differences between the selected variables. A total of 170 Palestinian athletes are in-volved in the final analysis study. The sample consists of males only. The mean of the nutrition knowledge score is (8.91 ± 2.5) out of 21. It is observed that employment status and monthly in-come has an influence on nutrition knowledge score among athletes. Overall, 59.3% of participated athletes use ergogenic supplements; mostly energy drinks (28.8%) while anabolic steroid is the least type of supplements used by the athletes. The majority of the athletes rely on coaches and internet as a primary source for their information. The nutrition knowledge score seems to be insuffi-cient among participated athletes. The gaps in nutrition knowledge are evident. A better compre-hension of nutrition knowledge among athletes, especially the gaps in knowledge will let nutrition education interventions to emphasize specific areas, which in turn, require more awareness and improvement.