Nutritional knowledge among high school athletes towards reducing risk of sports injury

Abstract

Nutrition knowledge will provide correct information on the nutritional values of food and lead to healthy eating habits among athletes. However, a lack of nutritional knowledge can lead to questionable dietary practices or behaviors, which can result in adverse effects on their health and performance Thus, this study aims to assess nutritional knowledge among high school athletes and its association with the occurrence of sports injury. Approximately 200 participants (50% were male) aged range from 13 years old to 21 years completed this study. They answered an online questionnaire that consisted of two parts, demographic background and nutrition knowledge. The result showed that most school athletes were lack in nutritional knowledge with mean scores of 32.5 ± 10.6%. There was no significant association between nutritional knowledge and occurrence of injury during sports involvement except for micronutrient components (p<0.05), where those who had previous injury scored higher than those who did not have previous injury with the mean score was 31.5 ± 16.4% and 13.4 ± 15.8%, respectively. In summary, athletes need to be educated about the role of nutrition in developing healthy eating habits among these young athletes to prevent sports injury occurrence.