Member Profile: Kathryn Beck

Communications Officer

Kathryn Beck, co-leader of the communications committee for PINES, lives in Auckland, New Zealand. She currently is an Associate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics at Massey University, where she co-ordinates two sports nutrition courses, a course in nutrition and metabolism and the biometrics section of a research methods course, as well as supervises 17 PhD and MSc students across a broad range of nutrition topics.

Kathryn’s interest in sports nutrition started as a young athlete competing at a national level in duathlon and soccer (football).  Over the years she has played netball, tennis, touch rugby, and cricket. She has completed a ½ ironman, ½ marathons and endurance cycling events. Her interest in sport led to her completing degrees from the University of Otago in physical education and science, followed by her postgraduate diploma in dietetics.

Following this, Kathryn worked as a clinical and community dietitian, and then moved to Massey University for an assistant lecturing position.  She completed her MSc in 2008 and PhD in 2013, both which focussed on iron deficiency in young women.  This research extended her interests into nutritional epidemiology, dietary assessment and dietary pattern analysis and health outcomes. Dietary pattern analysis uses empirical and index-based methods to explore how people are eating, in particular the combinations of foods people are eating, rather than focussing on individual foods and nutrients. A proud moment was being awarded a World Cancer Research Fund Academy Fellowship to attend the International Course of Nutritional Epidemiology at the Imperial College in London.  Kathryn has published over 60 peer-reviewed manuscripts in international journals.

Kathryn’s research interests in sports nutrition have led to collaborations with researchers at the University of Sydney, helping them develop the Athlete Diet Index and PEAKS-NQ (Platform for Evaluating Athletes Knowledge in Sports Nutrition Questionnaire).  Kathryn is particularly interested in the role that sport can play in improving young athletes’ dietary practices.  She is currently supervising students in the following sports nutrition areas:

• investigating athlete preferences for nutrition education,
• exploring parent and children’s perspectives regarding food and beverage sponsorship in sport,
• the effect of basic combat training on iron deficiency and other nutrition outcomes in female military recruits.

Kathryn enjoys working with groups of young athletes and has delivered sessions for High Performance Sport NZ (Pathway to Podium programme), as well as for the Massey University Academy of Sport, various groups of high school athletes, women’s rugby and badminton.

Another interest outside of sports nutrition is netball. Kathryn currently plays netball and coaches two primary school netball teams. She enjoys supporting her two young children in their sports (netball, basketball and soccer), and her husband who has completed four ironman races.

Kathryn enjoys working with PINES; this combines her interest of sports nutrition, with learning about how nutrition is undertaken in countries outside of New Zealand.

Massey University profile

Twitter @KathrynBeck