ABSTRACT
The nutrition of athletes has been of interest to scientists for decades and since the origins of sports competitions questions about what to eat and what to drink in order to improve performance have been raised. Today there is scientific evidence that adequate dietary habits influence to a large extent an athlete’s health, body composition, and energetic pathways during training as well as during competition and recovery (Barr, 1999; American Dietetic Association, 2000; Bernardot, 2000; Wilmore and Costill, 2004; www.ais.org.au/ nutrition, 2005; www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/ vitamins.html, 2005). Athletes should be well informed about the food groups, energy intake and daily meal schedules. As previous investigations have shown, athletes obtain most of their knowledge about nutrition from their coaches, especially physical conditioning coaches (Angel and Gillespie, 1990; Conkle and Tishler, 1992; Burns et al., 2004).
