Investigating Nutritional Literacy of Male Student Athletes Contributed in 2018 Iran University Games

Nutritional literacy is the athlete’s capability for obtaining, understanding and evaluating nutritional information that can affect athletic nutritional status. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess nutritional literacy of male athlete participating in the 2018 Iran University Games. In this study, 340 student athletes (age 22.3 ± 4.23 years, height 179.21 ± 10.12 cm, weight 75.23 ± 13.16 kg, body mass index 23.47 ± 3.13 kg/m2) in 14 sports (futsal, handball, volleyball, basketball, table tennis, badminton, track and field, chess, karate, taekwondo, swimming, judo, freestyle wrestling and Greco Roman wrestling) were selected by available targeted sampling method. Data analysis was carried out by using one sample t-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The results of the present study showed that 42.44%, 32.17% and 25.39% of students had poor, moderate and good nutritional literacy, respectively. Students with more sports precedent and higher education had a higher level of nutritional literacy. The lowest percentage of correct responses was related to nutritional comprehension, food groups, doing the calculations, and reading food labels. This study showed that the nutritional literacy of male student athletes participated in the Iran university games is poor and that they need more theoretical and applied nutrition educations irrespective of their sports fields and academic levels. Paper Type: Research Article