Nutrition Knowledge Scale Application in Professional and Amateur Track and Field Athletes

An adequate nutrition is necessary to supply the energy demand required by exercise as much for active individuals and for athletes. However, much more than sports performance, the nutrition knowledge is essential for both populations for prevention of illnesses. Many interventions centered in nutritional education have been lead with the intention to increase nutrition knowledge and, consequently, improve nutritional behaviors. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the nutrition knowledge of professional and amateur track and field athletes with application of a scale previously validated in Brazil. The sample was composed by 26 professional and 41 amateur track and field athletes of several modalities in phase of continuous training. The results have shown that professional and amateur track and field athletes generally presented moderate nutritional knowledge, with the latter presenting punctuation significantly higher than the professional group, a fact associated with their higher educational background. In conclusion, professional track and field athletes present lower nutritional knowledge, which can be partly attributed to the fact that they see the nutritional science with performance as main objective. Further applications of this scale in professional and amateur athletes must be carried out in order to assess the nutritional knowledge level of this population.