BACKGROUND: Elite adolescent footballers experience periods of rapid growth and maturation alongside their intense training programs. Therefore, their nutritional habits should reflect this and be tailored to support healthy growth and recovery 1. Research has shown that U12/13 and U15 footballers within Category One Academy require approximately 2859 ± 265 kcal.d (range 2275-3903 kcal.d) and 3029 ± 262 kcal.d (range 2738-3726 kcal.d), respectively, to fuel their training programs 2. Food choices can be influenced by a range of physiological, psychological, and social factors, with nutrition knowledge being recognized as an important determinant of nutritional adherence among elite adolescent footballers. However, an ongoing limitation regarding assessing nutrition knowledge is the availability of high-quality, valid procedures, as well as a lack of specificity for certain sports and cohorts. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop and validate a nutrition knowledge tool, which is based on the most recent football/youth nutrition guidelines, for use with English football academies. METHODS: = 109), to prove the construct validity of the tool. RESULTS: = < 0.001) between the individual scores of the adolescent footballers on the two attempts of the test, approximately three weeks apart. CONCLUSION: The final version of the tool presents a valid and reliable tool, specific to the sport of football, that practitioners can use to measure the effectiveness of nutrition curriculums within English football academies.
Morgan et al. (Thu,) studied this question.