Pre-season dietary intake of professional soccer players

Abstract

The dietary intake of professional soccer players was adequate in energy, but inadequate in macro and micronutrients, which suggests the need to improve nutritional practices to sustain the physical demands of soccer during pre-season.

Dietary Intakes of Professional and Semi-Professional Team Sport Athletes Do Not Meet Sport Nutrition Recommendations—A Systematic Literature Review

“…The majority of studies included in this review included team sport athletes competing professionally and semi-professionally in Australia ( n = 255) [3,25,26,33,43] and Spain ( n = 81) [28,29,30,36], with the remaining studies including athletes from Europe (not-specified) ( n = 34) [10,27], England ( n = 30) [23,34], America ( n = 26) [32,38], Canada ( n = 25) [39], Brazil ( n = 19) [37], Netherlands ( n = 14) [24], South Africa ( n = 11) [35], United Kingdom ( n = 10) [2], and Mexico ( n = 6) [31,37]. The majority of studies included in this review reported the dietary intakes of professional team sport athletes [2,3,10,23,24,26,27,28,29,31,33,34,36,37], with additional studies exploring dietary intake of semi-professional team sport athletes [32,35,38,39] and studies exploring the dietary intakes of a combination of sports [25,30,43]. Studies included a range of team sport athletes with the majority of studies reporting on the dietary intakes of football athletes ( n = 210) [23,24,25,28,30,31,34,37], followed by Australian football ( n = 139) [3,26,43].…”

“…The majority of studies included in this review reported the dietary intakes of professional team sport athletes [2,3,10,23,24,26,27,28,29,31,33,34,36,37], with additional studies exploring dietary intake of semi-professional team sport athletes [32,35,38,39] and studies exploring the dietary intakes of a combination of sports [25,30,43]. Studies included a range of team sport athletes with the majority of studies reporting on the dietary intakes of football athletes ( n = 210) [23,24,25,28,30,31,34,37], followed by Australian football ( n = 139) [3,26,43]. Across the remaining studies, other team sport athletes represented in this review include; rugby union ( n = 70) [10,27,33,35], ice-hockey ( n = 25) [39], wheelchair basketball ( n = 17) [29], American football ( n = 15) [32], handball ( n = 14) [36], volleyball ( n = 11) [38], rugby league ( n = 10) [2].…”

“…Dietary intake data were collected most frequently using food diaries/records (weighed and not weighed). Studies used 7-day food diaries [2,3,23,28,33,35,39], 3-day food diaries [29,32,37,38] and 24 hr recalls [10,24,25,43]. Other studies used food diaries of different duration (i.e., 4-day, 6-day, and 8-day) [27,30,34], dietary recalls (i.e., 72-h) [26,36] and a combination of 4-day weighed food diary in addition to a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) to assess dietary intake [31].…”

“…In the past decade, thousands of new research papers have been published in sports nutrition and 17 new consensus statements and recommendation papers have been released by authoritative organisations such as the IOC, ACSM, ISSN [4,5,6,7,8,9,11,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. There have also been a large number of published studies on the dietary intake of professional and semi-professional team sport athletes during this time [2,3,10,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39]. With new sports nutrition recommendations [5,6,7,8,11,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21] and updated literature reporting the dietary intake of team sport athletes, it is now timely to review the literature to determine whether team sport athletes consume diets that align with the sports nutrition recommendations [2,3,10,23,24,25,26,…”

“…There have also been a large number of published studies on the dietary intake of professional and semi-professional team sport athletes during this time [2,3,10,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39]. With new sports nutrition recommendations [5,6,7,8,11,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21] and updated literature reporting the dietary intake of team sport athletes, it is now timely to review the literature to determine whether team sport athletes consume diets that align with the sports nutrition recommendations [2,3,10,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39]. This paper aims to review the literature on dietary intakes of professional and semi-professional team sport athletes systematically with the aim of identifying priority areas for dietetic intervention.…”