Nutrition education and cooking workshops in football student athletes

Athletes and coaches know that preparation is important in the development and performance of many sports. Still, it appears that the eating habits of many college athletes are not ideal.

This could partly be because of a lack of nutrition knowledge and the cooking skills needed to change eating habits for sport.

In this context, it is important to plan programs that have the potential to improve the eating habits of student athletes.

Read this open access paper on the FACETS website.

Programs that combine nutrition education and cooking workshops seem to be a new strategy, especially for university student athletes who live alone and who must meet certain nutritional needs.

The aim of this research project was to evaluate the effect of a program combining nutrition education and cooking workshops on different factors such as nutritional knowledge, plan to prepare healthy meals, eating habits and quality of the diet among university football players.

In addition, the impact of the program on factors of performance such as sleep, stress, and well-being was also evaluated.

Overall, 23 football players completed various questionnaires and measurements of height, weight, and waist circumference were taken before and after the program (immediately after and 2 months after).

Ultimately, the 13 players who participated in the program improved their nutrition knowledge more than the 10 players who participated in the study without receiving any intervention. On the other hand, this program did not lead to changes in eating habits in the plans of university football players to prepare healthy meals or in the factors of performance tested.

Different results may be seen depending on how often healthy meal preparation happens and overall eating habits if the program is extended to a longer period of time.

Nevertheless, the conclusions of this project are interesting for many university sports teams as they demonstrate that a program based on nutrition education and cooking workshops has the potential to improve nutrition knowledge.

Read the paper — Evaluation of a randomized nutrition intervention combining nutrition education and cooking workshops on dietary intakes and psychosocial determinants of performance in university football athletes by David Larose, Shirin Panahi, Raphaëlle Jacob, and Vicky Drapeau