Most high school athletes do not know proper fuel methods

Tuesday, February 18, 2025 (Healthday News) – high school athletes often appear on the field that is not properly heated for the upcoming competition, since they have not been taught an important basis for nutrition, according to a new study.

In surveys, teenagers showed a dramatic lack of knowledge about nutritional facts that could help them compete harder and to recover better. Nutrition.

“Your measure of general nutritional knowledge and sports nutrition knowledge was very, very low,” said researcher Jennifer Fields, assistant professor of nutritional science at the University of Connecticut, in a press release.

“They didn’t know how to eat a balanced diet for their general health,” she continued. “Moreso, they didn’t know how to make proper refueling decisions for their sport.”

For the study, 44 student athletes in teen age filled the shortened questionnaire for sports nutrition knowledge, a survey that was found out how much a person about nutrition in general and the food for sporting competition in particular knows.

Overall, the students only have about 45% of the questions, as the results show. They achieved 58% for general nutritional skills and 35% for sports nutrition.

In particular, the students were far from the base when it came to the most important nutrients they need to competive effectively, researchers said.

The teenagers thought they needed fewer carbohydrates and calories than recommended, as much more protein and fat than necessary, according to the study.

In truth, student athletes should consume more than half of their daily calories as carbohydrates, said Fields. This is a critical difference between the way regular students and athletes should eat.

“Carbohydrates are the best friends of the athletes,” says Fields. “This is so contradictory of what many social media tell us.”

A total of 2 out of 5 athletes surveyed (41%) stated that their sports organizations do not grant any access to a nutritionist, nutritional areas or nutritional information in order to support their essay decisions.

Most athletes most often turned to family and friends (43%) or trainer (39%) to better understand the best options for food.

A lack of knowledge of nutrition was assessed as the most common barrier for healthy diet (37%), followed by energy or motivation (34%) and access to food (10%).

Fields said these knowledge gaps could be powered by inaccurate information that was sprayed on social media.

“Young people in particular are only flooded with social media,” she added.

“High school is on Instagram, Tikok, whatever it may be, preferred how your body should look like, how to eat and how you should train,” said Fields. “And often it is really contradictory with how she should recharge your batteries as an athlete.”

For example, intermittent fasting diets are tended on social media, and such a eating pattern can undermine the sporting success, said Fields.

Student athletes have to fuel all day to support both performance and recovery, she said.

“One of our greatest snack bars is simply the need for more general nutritional education and sports -specific nutritional education for these young athletes,” said Fields. “If we can change the behavior in these high school years, they come to college and have a much better feeling for how to eat for their health and optimize their performance.”

More information

John’s Hopkins Medicine has more dinner before the competition.

Source: University of Connecticut, press release, February 11, 2025