What should be on your plate? Study shows student athletes don’t know

High school health classes often consist of a series of awkward lessons about STDs, drugs, and alcohol. Rarely do these classes teach students anything about another critical component of their health — nutrition.

This lack of nutrition education is especially dangerous to student athletes who need to fuel their bodies properly to protect themselves from injury and other health risks.

A new study shows that high school athletes have some serious gaps in both their general and sports-specific nutrition knowledge.

This work was published in Nutrients. Jennifer B. Fields, assistant professor of nutritional science in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, collaborated with researchers at the University of Wisconsin and George Mason University on this study.

Fields and her collaborators have known that young athletes struggle with proper nutrition to fuel their highly active bodies.

“There’s this preconceived notion that all athletes are healthy,” Fields says. “A lot of times that’s not the case.”

The researchers previously found a high prevalence of eating disorders and other forms of disordered eating in college athletes, often linked to a lack of nutrition knowledge.

Student athletes often turn to unscientific outlets, like social media, for nutrition information in the absence of formal education.

Given this, the team became interested in seeing if similar patterns existed for high school athletes.

They used a pre-validated survey, the Abridged Sports Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire, to assess student athletes’ nutrition knowledge. Forty-four students were recruited from high schools in Wisconsin and beyond.  The students’ total nutrition score averaged around 45% for both boys and girls. Their general nutrition knowledge was about 58% and sport nutrition knowledge was about 35%.

The students’ perceptions about the daily recommended intake of key nutrients were significantly off base. They thought they needed fewer carbohydrates and total calories, and far more protein and fat than is actually recommended.

The students also demonstrated a lack of knowledge about when and what to eat to support sport performance.

“Their level of general nutrition knowledge and sport nutrition knowledge was very, very low,” Fields says. “They didn’t know how to eat a balanced diet for their overall health. Moreso, they didn’t know how to make proper fueling decisions for their sport.”

Many students reported that their primary source for nutrition knowledge was friends or family, followed closely by their coaches, who do not generally receive any formal nutrition training or education.

Fields says many of these knowledge gaps may be fueled by social media which pumps out inaccurate nutrition information and unrealistic body standards for young people, especially athletes.

“Adolescents in particular are just inundated with social media,” Fields says. “High schoolers are on Instagram, TikTok, whatever it may be, getting preconceived notions about how their bodies should look, how they should eat, and how they should exercise. And many times, it’s really conflicting with how they should be fueling as an athlete.”

One of the key differences between sports and regular nutrition is athletes’ calories and carbohydrate needs. Athletes should be consuming more than half their daily calories as carbohydrates, Fields says.

“Carbohydrates are athletes’ best friends,” Fields says. “That is so contradictory to what a lot of social media tells us.”

Athletes also, generally, shouldn’t follow the trend of intermittent fasting diets as they need to be fueling consistently throughout the day to support performance and recovery and ensure they are getting enough calories.

Athletes need to have more muscle mass to support their own safety as well, meaning they won’t look like some of the people they see on social media.

The next step for this research will be to develop an educational intervention for high school athletes to empower them with the knowledge they need to make healthy choices.

“One of our biggest takeaways is simply the need for more general nutrition education and sports-specific nutrition education for these adolescent athletes,” Fields says. “If we can change the behaviors throughout these high school years, then they get to college and have a much better sense of how to eat for their health and to optimize their performance.”