Book Review: Fueling Young Athletes
Author: Heather R. Mangieri, RDN, CSSD, MS
In her new book Fueling Young Athletes, sports dietitian Heather Mangieri addresses the importance of helping young athletes develop healthy nutrition and hydration habits. Anyone working with active kids and teens is familiar with the challenges of helping them fuel well, which can include after school or evening practice times, demanding competition schedules, frequent eating on the road, late-night snacking, skipped breakfasts, less-than-healthful lunches, no time to fuel for afterschool sports and the lure of supplements.
Mangieri offers a clear explanation of sports nutrition principles, then follows this up by walking the reader through methods for calculating nutrient needs. Tables aid the reader in selecting foods rich in iron, calcium, and vitamin D, key nutrients which are often lacking in athlete’s diets. Body composition goals, game day fueling, dietary supplements, and disordered eating are all addressed. She does all this with a clear passion for her topic, providing motivation for athletes to invest time and energy in improving their nutrition plan.
A strength of the book is the help Mangieri provides the athlete in customizing meal plans. She uses a modified food exchange system and teaches readers how to create “meal skeletons” which can be built on to vary the diet. She refers to meals and mini-meals rather than meals and snacks, and offers specific suggestions for pre-event and post-event fueling. She also provides guidance for food and fluid intake during practice and, when warranted, during competition.
Of course the best plan in the world will not be effective unless it is properly executed. Recognizing this, Mangieri goes beyond teaching readers how to develop a healthy performance plan by helping them recognize and overcome barriers to implementation. For example, when a barrier to eating breakfast is feeling nauseated in the morning, her proposed solution is to drink instead.
Throughout the book, Mangieri addresses common misconceptions that can trip up athletes, such as the confusion between energy drinks and sports drinks. She uses real athlete scenarios to identify goals, explain why these goals are appropriate, and how to achieve them.
While few books are “perfect”, I was disappointed to see outdated protein recommendations rather than updated 2016 recommendations published in the joint AND/ACSM Position Stand on Nutrition and Athletic Performance. I also noticed a discrepancy when discussing Beta-Hydroxy-Beta-Methylbutyrate (HMB). Mangieri refers to a position stand of the International Society of Sports Nutrition which states that an athlete would need to eat more than 600 grams of high-quality protein to obtain the 60 grams of leucine necessary to produce 3 grams of HMB used in adult human studies. This does not coincide with her table identifying the leucine content of foods (pg 92).
No nutrition book is complete with recipes, right? Those offered here include Liquid-Fuel items such as smoothies and sports drinks, and Solid-Fuel items including energy bars, and breakfast items. All are complete with a nutrition label so the athlete knows just how much carbohydrate, protein, fat, calories, and vitamin D, calcium, and iron they are getting.
This book will be a useful reference to a sports dietitian and other health professionals working with athletes younger than age 18. It will be a helpful guide to motivated parents and older teens as they strive to “eat to win” using a science-based approach.
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Reviewed by
Karen Dolins EdD RD CSSD
Faculty with the Nutrition and Exercise Physiology Program
Teachers College of Columbia University, New York City
