Why did you choose that to eat? A tool for understanding athlete food choices

By Rachael Thurecht, APD, AccSD, PhD candidate, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia

Background

Understanding why athletes choose what they eat is important for helping them achieve an intake that supports their health, training and performance. While athletes may be aware of appropriate sports nutrition practices, they may not consistently make winning food choices. Factors such as sensory appeal, religion, emotions, convenience and social influences may take priority over performance and health. Additionally, the relative influence of these factors may vary depending on competitive seasons or training phases.

To date, research on athletes’ food choices has been mostly conducted through small studies specific to a single sport or country. The growing interest in this topic raises the need for developing and validating a tool which can help standardise the data. This will allow researchers to compare factors that influence athletes’ food choices across different sports, cultures and phases of competition. Additionally, a tool that identifies key factors influencing athlete food choices could inform more targeted dietary interventions, thus improving diet quality and an athlete’s overall health and performance.

To fulfil the need for a validated athlete-specific tool, the Athlete Food Choice Questionnaire (AFCQ) was developed. This novel tool contains 36 questions presented as neutral statements which are organised into nine factors that impact food choices. Each item is rated on how often it influences the respondent’s food choices along a frequency scale from 1 (never) to 5 (always). The AFCQ was developed to identify and validate the food choice factors (latent constructs) that are difficult to directly observe and require multiple items to measure.

Developing and validating the Questionnaire

Development of the AFCQ began with identifying a pool of questions from existing literature and the Determinants of Nutrition and Eating (DONE) Framework (Figure 1). The AFCQ’s initial phase of data collection used a pool of 84 question items. Responses were obtained from a sample of 156 athletes from 31 countries and 17 different sports during the 2017 Universiade games. Principal component analysis was used to identify the food choice factors within the questionnaire and to reduce the number of question items to produce a succinct and more practical tool. More details on the development process are available in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism (Thurecht & Pelly, 2019).

The second round of data collection, to examine validity and reliability of the AFCQ, targeted athletes within the dining hall at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. The second sample included athletes from 45 countries and 20 different sports (n=251). Overall, the AFCQ demonstrated validity and acceptable internal reliability. A manuscript is currently in preparation that will provide details on the validation and reliability measures performed on this independent sample.

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Benefits and practical application

Why athletes choose what they eat is a multifaceted concept, with performance enhancement being a highly influential factor for elite athletes. The AFCQ includes a performance dimension which is absent from other validated food choice tools. Because the AFCQ is applicable to a wide spectrum of athletes from various sports and cultural backgrounds, it provides researchers with a suitable option for studying the multiple factors that influence athlete food choices.

A recent publication summarises the first use of the AFCQ with the combined Universiade and Commonwealth Games samples. The study identified the key factors that affect athletes’ food choices and examined differences between groups based on sport and level of competition. The full-text article is available in Nutrients, (Thurecht & Pelly, 2020).

Sports nutrition education is important for top athletes. However, more research is needed to better support optimal food choices. The AFCQ provides added context for sports dietitians when interpreting dietary intake and factors that can be barriers to making appropriate food choices. Sports dietitians working with large and diverse groups can use the AFCQ to screen athletes and then offer targeted nutrition education. For example, from a large group of athletes, the AFCQ might identify ten athletes with relatively higher scores for emotional eating. From this finding, these athletes could be provided with targeted resources and education. The AFCQ may be particularly useful with emerging athletes or lower calibre athletes who may not get priority nutrition education.

Applications and benefits include:

• Providing added context to why individual or groups of athletes choose what to eat
• Creating a knowledge-behaviour toolset by using the AFCQ in conjunction with other measures, such as a sports nutrition knowledge questionnaire and dietary intake measure
• Use with athletes as a reflective task to bring awareness to what drives their food choices during different competitive seasons/cycles
• Enabling and encouraging more food choice research
• Standardising the data captured on different athlete food choices to improve between-study comparisons
• With further validation, there is potential for use in recreational athlete populations

Ongoing data collection

The author is still actively recruiting participants to test the consistency of the questionnaire when administered to an athlete population outside of a major competition event. This will also allow for investigation of the key factors that influence athlete food choices during different competitive phases.

She would greatly appreciate it if you would share this research with athletes to ensure input from all sports and countries.  If you are a coach, team manager or support staff of high-performance athletes, please share and encourage their participation.

Within the study, participants are asked to complete the AFCQ and some questions on eating behaviours and demographics.  The questionnaire should take 15-20 minutes to complete.  This research has ethics approval from the University of the Sunshine Coast.

Who can participate?

You can complete the online questionnaire if you –

• Are aged 18 years or old
• Are a high-performance athlete or para-athlete
• Have competed in national, international or other major competitive events in your sport
• Have a basic ability to read and write in English
• Are from any sport or any country

This is the link to the online questionnaire: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AFCQ2019

Thank you for your help with this study.

Author

Rachael Thurecht, APD, AccSD, PhD Candidate USC

Rachael is an Associate Lecturer in Nutrition and Dietetics and in her final year of her PhD at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. In addition to her work as an Accredited Practicing Dietitian and Sports Dietitian Rachael is also the Executive Officer for PINES.

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