ABSTRACT
The marketing pressure by the sports nutrition industry on athletic populations and sports nutrition professionals has engendered the widely held belief that the intake of dietary supplements is an essential part of participation in sports and physical activity. Many sports organizations and federations, as well as teams or individual athletes, also obtain substantial sponsorship from supplement companies. In the case of football, the administration of sports supplements has become a more or less standard procedure, often promoted by team physicians, coaches, and even the parents of young players. In this review, the relevance of supplement intake in football is discussed from a scientific perspective, together with some ethical concerns associated with supplement intake and sports education.
