BEIJING 2022 Winter Olympics: A Canadian Sports Dietitian Perspective
Written by: Angela Dufour
Along with my colleague Catherine Nauelleu, I was honored to represent Canada in Beijing as a performance dietitian. We were part of the Health Services Team (medical) and were available on site for any nutrition/health issues that arose. We ensured that both athletes and staff were well nourished. This included stocking an adequate complement of healthy supplemental snack foods in the Team Canada lounges for late night competitions or early morning training when the athletes don’t feel like going to the dining hall. The athletes like having familiar foods that had been shipped prior to the games, such as Core Power (a BIG challenge to get customs clearance for Beijing!), oatmeal, soups, sponsored products (General Mills cereals, granola bars, crackers, Kraft Peanut butter), some salty and sweet snacks, and GOOD quality coffee/tea.
Lead Performance Dietitian Role at the Olympics:
The role of the performance dietitian incorporates skills far beyond sport nutrition science. It involves on-site food service/food safety management, quality assurance, effective team building, and collaboration skills—all while working in a high-stress environment. I call it performance solutions on demand!
The Lead RD role with the Canadian Olympic Committee is multi-faceted and involves many months to years of planning. These roles include reviewing the Athletes Village Olympic Dining Hall Menu, Venue feeding options, grab-and-go stations, and cafes. First drafts of the menus usually show a lack of variety of gluten free, vegan, and multi-cultural options. Feedback is compiled by the PINES menu-review group (supported by Professor Fiona Pelly) and is then sent back to the IOC and Organizing Committee. We repeatedly have offered similar feedback and comments as in previous games but have yet to see a revised menu. This commonly happens, thus, one of my roles is to ensure safe food delivery, including allergen labelling and appropriate menu options.
Covid Countermeasures (CCM) meant complying with enhanced sanitation requirements, including hand washing stations, wearing gloves and masks, no self-serve options, reduced seating, and spacing with plexi-glass dividers (See Figure 2). Interestingly , since the Tokyo games in 2021 (where we were first introduced to these Covid Countermeasures), reports of athlete/staff illness within the Olympic Village at the games were significantly reduced. One can assume that this could be attributed to the enhanced measures of cleanliness, personal sanitization, and decreased dining hall congestion.
In Tokyo, staff and athletes complied with the CCMs, but in Beijing, we observed many challenges to being compliant. Having three separate villages each utilizing different local caterers contributed to the problem. The one IOC representative had difficulty keeping abreast of continual requests to help us comply with food service provisions across settings.
The non-compliant items/challenges ranged from:
- Lack of certified Gluten Free items (See Figure 8) (in a non contaminated section of MDH),
- Improperly labelled allergens on menu cards
- Cross-contamination of allergens (including fish, nuts, dairy, gluten)
- Improper holding temperatures (or lack of record there of!)
- Lack of nutritionally adequate sports foods in the Main Dining Hall and Venues (See Figure 3,4) (This meant we relied more on our supplemental cargo snacks and having to transport take-out containers of foods to venue sites.
- Lack of appropriate food service timing at venues
- Lack of confirmation of safety of uncontaminated (Clenbuterol) meat products
- No catering for boxed lunches/no grab-and-go stations. (This meant staff and athletes were required to fill out forms to get a takeout container and fill with items from the servery.)
- Inadequate food for athletes in quarantine
- Lack of Sports Nutrition Experts in Nutrition Kiosk (Table) (See Figure 5).
- Lack of information on standardized recipes
- Not following the approved menu
These challenges often made it difficult for athletes to access safe and suitable food before, during and after competitions and training. My main role at these games quickly shifted and I helped the athletes navigate suitable foods to meet their needs, while providing them alternatives and nutrition support through our supplemental food supply.
Figure 1. Pyeong Chang 2018 Dining Hall Figure 2. Beijing 2022 Dining Hall
Then and now:
Being an integral member of our medical team meant being available for any athlete and or staff assessments and review of any dining hall nutrition concerns. The COC RD role also involved, as previously mentioned, food service/administrative duties such as collaborating with the organizing Committee’s food and beverage caterer (which was different caterers for all 3 dining halls and venues), to ensure above all SAFE food delivery and variety of foods to accommodate all athletes’ preferences/allergens and cultural choices. In Beijing, it was extremely challenging to make any recommendations such as better holding temperatures, better variety of positioning of allergen items, 100% compliance by the head chef and staff to limit the cross contamination of allergens and to limit the risk of disease/illness/infection. Language barriers and lack of knowledge of the seriousness of allergens/food safety, added to this challenge. Even the USA’s Aramark representative found that his recommendations were not being addressed. The only way some issues were resolved were by other National Organizing Committees (NOC) voicing their concerns at the Chef De Mission meetings with our games managers.
The approved (or last reviewed version of) the Athlete Dining Hall menu was not followed in the beginning of games. Each caterer at each village seemed to be showcasing their own recipes! The Gluten Free section was non-existent (athletes had only potatoes and rice for the first 10-12 days!) (See Figure 8) and there was no pizza station, even though a station was labelled for it.
Food choices included various cultural options such as Halal, Traditional Chinese Hot Pot, World Stations, and a small vegetarian station (with mostly high sodium choices). Fruit, cereals, condiments, desserts and bread choices were very limited. The hand washing stations were not enforced and were non-existent in the mountain villages. Sanitization of tables and cubicles by staff were done fairly regularly. Serving was done from behind sneeze-guards with all staff wearing full hazmat suits with face masks and gloves.
There were interesting hot “holding cubicles” that were meant to store hot foods for pick-up by NOC team members (their solution to a grab-and-go option). However, they were never used, as they required a passcode to open the cubicle and no one seemed to have it! That was a blessing in disguise, as they would likely not have been safely monitored for temperature control and holding times!
The fast-food sponsor for these games was Pizza Hut and KFC. Both were welcomed due to the limited variety and questionable food safety in the dining halls and venues. These outlets however also lacked variety and often had long waiting lines and limited space.
Figure 3. Venue Feeding Figure 4. Venue Hot Feeding
Additional Covid Challenges During the Games
- Poor Transportation made it difficult to travel to the other villages, until the high-speed train was in operation. This was not an option during pre-Games set-up,
- Lack of ability to purchase foods on site due to covid restrictions. We relied solely on our pre-shipped food supply, from which some items (like jam) were “missing” after it had cleared customs. This meant we had to do without.
- We had to change our food service delivery model to pre-packaged food. Bulk cereals, fresh fruits, or bread (for toast) were not options due to covid and lack of ability to purchase foods on site.
Figure 5: Nutrition Kiosk/Table Figure 6: Main Dining Hall Beijing Village
Next Steps and Final Thoughts
Having now been to 3 Olympics and 1 Pan Am Games, I am pleased to report that sports dietitians are having more of a role leading up to these events, including collaborating with food service with the organizing committees. Yet, we still have work to do!
Each games brings a new set of unique challenges faced by the NOC’s RD, including communication barriers, reducing the risk of food contamination (meat, tea etc.), and improper/inconsistent labelling, to name a few. The experience of the host caterer with feeding athletes impacts the depth of these challenges. Ideally, we need consistent, qualified caterers from games to games. A consensus statement on the minimum standards of the Olympic Games menu and food service delivery model could then reduce the challenges we have been reporting over the past 20 years. It’s time for a call to action from PINES to propose improvements!
Figure 7. Single Serve Dishware/Cutlery Figure 8: Gluten Free (?) Station
Author
Angela Dufour, MEd, RD, IOC Dip Sports Nutr, HPC, PhD Student
Over the past 20 years, Angela has been working as a high-performance sport dietitian within the Canadian sport system, including the Sports Institute Atlantic and the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Sport Institute Network (COPSIN).
Angela has been the Lead Performance Dietitian for the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and Team Canada since the 2018 Pyeong Chang Winter Olympics. She attended the 2019 Pan American Games in Peru, 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics, and 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. She leads a national directive on sport supplement policy, provisions, tracking, and education in Canada.
Angela is a graduate of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Diploma in Sports Nutrition. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Sunshine Coast in Australia in the area of Food Service Pandemic Provisions for Athletes at Major Games, Focusing on Safe, Sustainable and Suitable Food. She is a part-time faculty instructor at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax NS and is owner of her private sports nutrition consulting and education practice: Nutrition in Action and Performance Nutrition Academy Ltd.
