High School Female Athletes Do Not Meet National Nutritional Guidelines

Brantley Aycock

Overview

"The Effect of Qualitative Versus Quantitative Nutrition Education on the Eating Habits of Female High School Athletes" In order to perform well and maintain their health, athletes must exercise proper nutrition. However, female athletes are prone to disordered eating behaviors (Birch, 2005). These behaviors put the athletes at risk of acquiring the female athlete triad (Day et al., 2015). Although the effect of nutritional education on collegiate female athletes has been explored, with differing conclusions, the effect of different types of nutritional education on high school athletes has not been investigated thoroughly. In this study, the eating habits of high school female athletes were compared before and after watching either a quantitative or qualitative nutrition education. The participants were asked to use a smartphone app to track the amount, in cups, of each food group they consumed over two weeks. These reported amounts were then analyzed using nutritional guidelines set by the Automated Self-Administered 24-Hour Recall (ASA24) to determine the healthiness of participants’ eating habits. It was found that neither type of presentation resulted in a significant change in diet. It was also found that the participants’ eating habits largely failed to meet nutritional guidelines. These results suggest that high school female athletes do not practice proper nutrition and are generally unaffected by nutritional education, putting them at risk for the female athlete triad. It may be necessary to develop alternative approaches to encourage players to perform healthy behaviors. By garnering a greater knowledge of how female athletes practice nutrition and are impacted by nutritional education, the medical and sports communities can implement strategies to improve athlete health.

From the student

Hello! My name is Brantley Aycock, and I’m from Columbia, South Carolina. I set out to investigate whether breaking down the details of sports nutrition into simple qualitative and quantitative parts would make it easier to understand and to investigate which approach would be most effective.

From the student

I've been running cross country and track at my high school for 5 years. Although I love running and know that it is beneficial to my health, as a beginner in the sport I struggled with fueling my body with enough food to keep up with the athletic rigor of running about 30 miles a week. After discussing the subject with my teammates, especially younger runners, I realized that this was a common problem. One symptom of hypo-energetic fueling in women is the female athlete triad, which consists of low energy availability, amenorrhea, and osteoporosis. I personally know numerous runners who have suffered from these symptoms, so I wanted to explore methods that could help female athletes practice proper nutrition in order to prevent these symptoms. In my background research, I couldn't find any studies that compared the effects of different types of nutritional education on the eating habits of female athletes, and I wondered whether a qualitative or quantitative approach to nutritional education would have a greater positive impact on the eating habits of female athletes. In order to test this, I created both a qualitative and quantitative presentation on nutrition for high school female athletes. Then I compared how many guidelines that female athletes at my high school met on the ASA-24 for a week before and after watching either the qualitative or quantitative presentation. My results showed that most female athletes do not even meet national nutritional guidelines for nonathletes, and the educational presentations did not make a significant difference in their eating habits. This project helped me understand that the nutrition of female athletes, particularly those in high school, is largely inadequate, which could make this population vulnerable to syndromes like the female athlete triad.