Knowledge and Attitude of Dietary Supplements among Arab Olympic Athletes and Coaches in Preparation Program for Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

Abstract

Nutrition plays an important role as a key factor in the performance of athletes and their coaches, so good and proper nutrition is essential for improving athletic performance and physical fitness. The lack of nutritional knowledge of athletes may affect their performance, and the most important of these issues is nutritional knowledge of food and dietary supplements Aim: To assess the nutritional knowledge, attitude, and practice of athletes and their coaches at the Arab Olympic Preparation Center about the dietary supplements, the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Strategy has been used to assess this. Method: A questionnaire-based study was applied to a convenient sample of 111 elite athletes and coaches in the Arab Olympic preparation programs during the period between January and March 2020 from different sports types. The questionnaire contained two-parts (personal information and nutritional supplement knowledge, attitude, and practice questionnaire) to meet the purpose of the study. Results: The total percentage of athletes' knowledge about nutritional supplements is only 46.94 %, indicating that this important group of society does not have sufficient knowledge of nutritional supplements. While the percentage of use of dietary supplements among elite athletes was approximately 41.6%, which is relatively high. Also, our study showed that coaches had a positive impact on the elite athletes due to good coaches' knowledge, 84.2% of elite athletes indicated that they had taken information from their coaches about dietary supplements, and 53.5% of elite athletes indicated that they had participated in nutritional supplement workshops. Conclusion: Based on our study, there was a relatively high prevalence of dietary supplements use among elite athletes and coaches at the Arab Olympic Preparation Program due to a lack of knowledge about dietary supplements.