Sports nutrition practices among athletes: A comprehensive nutritional assessment

Nutrition is very crucial in improving athletic performance, recovery and preventing injuries in sports. Proper nutrition helps in energy fueling, recovery of muscles, hydration, and general physiological fitness in the athletes. Even though there is greater awareness of nutrition in sports, practice continues to have gaps in knowledge. In 2024, a cross-sectional survey was performed on a group of over 120 athletes aged between 10 and 30 years to assess nutrition awareness, dietary and hydration practices, supplement use, and recovery practices associated with injury recovery. The self-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect data pertaining to sport-specific diets, hydration, supplement use, injury experience. The results were that the majority of the athletes were aware of the role of nutrition in performance and recovery, and the necessity to plan the diet on an individual basis was admitted. Ingestion of supplements especially multivitamins and protein powders was rampant, but most athletes claimed to take them without a professional advice. The most common injuries were muscle strains which were mainly lower limb injuries and were characterized by mild to moderate severity but had severe physical and psychological impact on the sports people. Although nutrition was the main focus in the recovery process, there were such challenges as insufficient nutrition knowledge, time constraints, and the inability to hire nutritionists. The article highlights the dire necessity to make fields of nutrition and real practices among sportsmen meet each other with the help of more education on sports nutrition and better accessibility to professional dietary advice.