Nutritional Knowledge Among Athletic Teams

The topic of sports nutrition has often been undermined in the athletic world. Practicing good nutritional habits has the ability to both improve performance and health. Several studies have examined nutritional knowledge among athletic teams; however very few have compared this knowledge among athletic teams. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of various athletes’ nutritional knowledge and evaluate the differences in this knowledge among NCAA Division II Athletic teams. A secondary purpose was to discover athlete’s confidence level in their nutritional knowledge as well as gain their opinion on how they would improve nutritional knowledge among athletic teams. Very few differences were able to be found between genders and athletic teams regarding nutritional knowledge. Also athletes overall did not score very high on the nutritional knowledge assessment. Additionally several beneficial suggestions were given on improving nutritional knowledge which include providing classes and having athletic trainers and coaches increase nutritional awareness. More research still needs to be done on this topic. However, steps should also begin to be implemented to increase the nutritional knowledge deficit among athletic teams with hopes of improving performance and health care of collegiate athletes