Why is sports nutrition so confusing?

What is it about sports nutrition that makes it so confusing at times?

2 weeks ago we kicked off the first block of my final year as a Dietetics Undergraduate student. This is a 10 week block where we will be performing a research study on a study population from the Tlokwe area in North West, South Africa. Our main focus for this next few weeks is on doing research, performing research and interpreting research.

And as I was sitting in one of our statistics classes, I was thinking about sports nutrition and how complex the world of research in nutrition and sports is. When you go on social media and you read posts about sports nutrition, or just have a conversation with people you train with about sports nutrition, it can start to seem downright confusing and contradictory.

Why is sports nutrition so confusing?

A recent article by Close et al. called “Paper to Podium” – a paper that addressed the relevance and application of sports nutrition in a real world context – noted that” sport nutrition is one of the fastest growing and evolving disciplines of sport and exercise science, demonstrated by a 4-fold increase in the number of research papers between 2012 and 2018”.

Despite this amazing growth in the field of sports nutrition, it can be a field that often seems very confusing and contradictory. According to this research paper, one of the main reasons are the growth of social media and infographics that try to summarize complex research studies in 140 characters or illustrations – in which case some important information and context gets left out.

Other reasons why the field of sports nutrition are so confusing:

1. Everyone eats on a daily basis, therefore there is a belief that everyone is “nutrition experts”; and experiences with food may also be cultural and/or emotional
2. Accurate assessment of what people eat, energy balance ect. Is highly challenging – with food tracking apps and activity monitors being quite inaccurate at times (up to 35% inaccuracy)
3. It is nearly impossible to isolate single nutrients in a study design, making it very difficult to make conclusions on single nutrients.

So, what does this mean for you as an athlete?

Firstly, it is important to be aware of the complexity of studies, and not to only look at a post on Instagram and base your beliefs about nutrition based on that. If you have the scientific background to do so, read and interpret the study – the whole study, not just the abstract. Factors like study design, participant types (like trained vs non-trained, female vs. male etc.), duration of the study, confounding factors and many other details impacts how the science should be translated to every day life. Many people make decisions about their nutrition based on “science” even though they take what the scientists actually intended the research to be for and about completely out of context.

If you do not know how to do this, get advice from a qualified professional in nutrition like a dietitian who will be able to make a conclusion based on the facts. While it may look like the field of sports nutrition is confusing and contradictory, it really is not – it just needs to be interpreted in context and in line with the right people the science was originally intended for.

I can’t wait to get to the end of my #RDtoBE journey and be able to work with athletes and do just that.

References

Close, Graeme & Kasper, Andreas & Morton, James. 2019. From Paper to Podium: Quantifying the Translational Potential of Performance Nutrition Research. Sports Medicine. 49. 25-37. 10.1007/s40279-018-1005-2.