It is clear that more research is needed to clarify if nutritional knowledge is linked to nutritional behaviour, and if individuals will improve their food choice and nutrition behavior in response to education. However there are factors, beliefs and attitudes that play a role in food choice and these need to be considered when providing nutrition education for adolescent athletes.
8.2.1. Influences on food choice
Neumark-Sztainer et al (1999) developed a model which describes the levels of influences on food choice in the adolescent. They define the most important factors to be hunger, cravings, taste, appearance, time and convenience in food choice. The ANKAA study clearly shows that this is the case for the 100 subjects involved in this research. Taste was the most popular choice as the most important influence on food choice for subjects from netball (36.84%), football (35.7%) and basketball (44.1%). It was the second choice of influence for the rugby players only 3.62% behind their first choice of cravings. This may indicate a positive approach to nutrition education for adolescents in that focusing on promoting tasty foods may influence them to try, and continue to choose those foods.
Rugby players rated cravings (38.46%) slightly more important than taste (34.62%). Underwater hockey players rated the healthiness of a food as the most important influence on food choice, even though the healthiness of a food was not given as an answer option on the questionnaire. 2.84% of basketball athletes and 14.3% of football players also ranked how healthy a food was as the most important factor on food choice. Neumark-Sztainer et al (1999) rates the beneficial effects of a food at the secondary level of factors influencing food choice but it is positive that a number of subjects rated this as the main factor in their decision on food choice. It may possibly indicate that adolescents are aware of the effects of food on health and performance. When the subjects were questioned on how important nutrition was in their sporting plans overall 79% answered that it was very important (100% of the underwater hockey players gave this response) and 88% overall indicated that they believed that sports nutrition would definitely improve their performance so they may be aware of choosing healthy foods affects performance.
Interestingly 7.14% of football athletes also mentioned that their nutritionist was the most important influence on food choice and 5.26% stated that activity was the most important influence for them. No athletes rated the coach as the most important factor on food choice, and only 3.85% of the rugby athletes rated advertising as the most important factor – no other subjects indicated advertising as important. Although it has been proposed that cost has a
significant impact on food choice in adolescents at a personal level (Story et al, 2002), only 7.14% of the football subjects indicated that cost was the main factor in food choice. No other subjects rated it as the number one factor. The reason for this is unknown but it could be possible that the adolescents rate factors such as taste more important than the overall cost of a food and are prepared to pay more for a food that taste better. Cultural aspects were also rated as a minor influence; only 8.82% of basketball subjects and 3.85% of rugby subjects rated this as the most important influence on their choice of food. In hindsight the option of hunger should have been included in question B.7., as well as the option of how healthy the food was. An indication of ethnic group may have provided more information on why cultural aspects were not important in food choice for majority of athletes.
8.2.2. Food skills
The food skills that the athletes possess may play a role in food choice, for example if they have a higher cooking ability they may consume better quality and more balanced meals. The subjects were asked to rate their cooking skills to give an indication of food skills on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being non-existent and 10 being excellent. A relationship between cooking skill rating and if the athlete played a role in food preparation seems to be apparent although it was not significant (p=0.131). Rugby players rated their cooking skills at 6.44 and they also had higher percentage of responses that said they prepared food (74%). Underwater hockey players rated their cooking skills at 7.67 and 66.7% of the group prepared food; however this group is very small so the results cannot be deemed conclusive. 57.1% of the Basketball subjects prepared food and gave themselves a rating of 5.43 for cooking skill level. Netball had a lower cooking skill rating of 4.85, only 50% of them said they prepared food and 100% of them lived at home (indicating that they may not play the role of food provision). The majority of the basketball players also still lived at home (94.1%). In contrast all of the rugby players lived away from home which indicates that they may have to take responsibility for their food intake as opposed to those who live at home where parents or caregivers may have responsibility for cooking. The rugby players were also older than the other sports groups.
It could therefore be assumed that those athletes who are living away from home are preparing meals for themselves and this is possibly a group which needs extra information immediately on how to prepare food. The rugby players who attended the focus group had a very strong focus on that they would like to have recipe ideas that would give suggestions of different ways to use a particular food, for example ways to use pasta instead of conventional recipe books which they stated “looked too flash” and they assumed the recipes contained in it would be too hard to
make and need many ingredients. They also stated that having ideas on cooking healthily on a budget would be welcomed and used, and especially a breakdown of the cost of homemade meals as compared to takeaways.
It is interesting that a greater number of basketball athletes (22.86%) had attended a cooking session but that they still rated their cooking skills lower than the average for all sports. This may indicate that they did not build enough confidence (self efficacy) from this activity or as most of them lived at home they had not practiced the skill as much as they could have. This may be an area of potential research. Seventeen point nine percent of the rugby athletes had also attended a cooking session and they rated their cooking skills at 6.43, possibly indicating that have had more practice at cooking (74% of them prepare food, as opposed to only 57.1% of the basketball athletes).
This is an area that should be addressed in an educational program for this group as having the skills to make healthy, balanced meals is important in ensuring an optimal intake. If the athlete is unable, or has little confidence in their cooking ability they may be more likely to resort to unbalanced or take away type meals.