Comparison of the Nutritional Knowledge of College Athletes and Non-Athletes

Background/Purpose: Given the current obesity crisis in the United States it is more important than ever that undergraduates have sufficient nutritional knowledge to make healthy choices. As undergraduate educators we assume our students (both athletes and non-athletes) come to us with the basic knowledge of nutrition attained through their parents, high school health courses, physicians, and other sources. However, current statistics on the number of college students who are overweight and obese tend to question this assumption. The purpose of this study was to compare the nutritional knowledge of undergraduate non-athletes with the knowledge of intercollegiate athletes and to assess the overall nutritional knowledge of both groups.

Method: The sample included 333 participants (270 undergraduate non-athletes, 63 intercollegiate athletes). Nutritional knowledge was assessed by the Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire (NKQ) created by Parmenter and Wardle (1999). The instrument has been shown to meet psychometric criteria for reliability (Cronbach’s alpha=.70-.97 and construct validity, P=.001). The instrument is divided into the sections of Dietary Recommendations (DR), Sources of Foods (SOF), Choosing Everyday Foods (CEF), Diet-Disease Relationships (DDR), and a Total Score (TS). These sections were used as the dependent variables. The independent variables were undergraduate non-athletes and intercollegiate athletes enrolled in various physical education courses and academic majors at a university in the southeastern United States.

Analysis/Results: Independent t-tests indicate significance differences for the TS (t=(331)=2.163,p=.031) when comparing college athletes (M=49.51±10.31) and non-athletes (M=53.022±11.890). Significance was also found (t=(331)=3.789,p<.000) for section 1 DR when comparing athletes (M=6.317±1.748) and non-athletes (M=7.118±1.450). No significant differences (p>.05) were found for section 2 SOF (athletes M=34.238±8.385 versus non-athletes M=36.437±9.325), section 3 CEF (athletes M=3.873±1.385 versus non-athletes M=4.185±1.625), and section 4 DDR (athletes M=5.079±2.042 versus non-non-athletes M=5.281±2.178).

Conclusions: Surprisingly, intercollegiate athletes have lower levels of nutritional knowledge than their non-athlete counterparts in all 5 sections of the NKQ. This is puzzling and also concerning because athletes typically receive nutritional guidance from the coaches they interact with (strength and conditioning, athletic trainers, sport coach, etc.) and many athletes receive meals prepared for them from the “training table.” The scores for both groups across all sections were poor and students, regardless of status (athlete vs. non-athlete), must be better educated on nutritional topics. Findings are discussed with specific recommendations made to improve nutritional knowledge of all undergraduate students.