Associations between dietary habits, nutritional knowledge and their determinants of Lithuanian Olympic Team athletes

The lack of nutritional knowledge is a limiting factor for healthy athletes’ nutrition. Nutritional knowledge can be developed by a number of information of (sports coaches, family members, friends, TV and radio broadcasts, etc.). These sources of information are not reliable and do not give relevant knowledge on athletes nutrition. Nutritional knowledge of athletes has not been investigated in Lithuania yet. This led to our research objective: to assess nutritional knowledge of Lithuanian Olympic Team athletes (n=195), to identify the factors determining it, and to find out association between nutritional knowledge and nutritional habits of the study group (the average age was 17.8 ± 3.2 years). The nutrition survey questionnaire was used to examine nutritional habits of Lithuanian Olympic Team athletes in 2013. Nutritional knowledge of athletes was assessed by adapting nutritional knowledge test (NKT). Logistic regression was applied to evaluate the interaction between athletes’ nutritional practices, nutrition knowledge and their determinants. The results showed that level of the nutritional knowledge of athletes has an average point. However, the nutritional knowledge of athletes depends on sport, gender, age, and education level. A higher level of nutrition knowledge is specific to athletes representing cyclic (odds ratio 3,6) and acyclic (odds ratio 3,6) sports, of higher education level (odds ratio 3,0), who are older (odds ratio 2,8) and who falls into the group of women (odds ratio 2,9). Nutritional knowledge is most sufficient of younger combat sports athletes with lower education level. Nutritional knowledge of athletes does not depend on the information received from the coaches (odds ratio 0,7), family members (odds ratio 1,4) the popular literature (odds ratio 1,6), TV and radio (odds ratio 0,8), doctors (odds ratio 0,5), dieticians (odds ratio 0,8) and friends (odds ratio 3,6). Knowledge about nutrition does not affect dietary habits of athletes. Athletes lack the motivation to eat healthily. The nutritional habits of athletes are mainly determined by the taste of food, too little attention is drawn to the sport discipline and healthful diet effect. Therefore, athletes’ dietary habits do not meet nutritional guidelines. In summary, educational programs must be implemented that develop nutritional knowledge of athletes in Lithuania. In addition, during educational process special attention must be focused on the improvement of nutrition knowledge of combat sports athletes