Devleopment of a sports nutrition curriculum to increase nutrition knowledge among high school athletes in Los Angeles, CA

The purpose of this project was to develop and implement a sports nutrition curriculum to increase nutrition knowledge among high school athletes in Los Angeles, CA. The sports nutrition curriculum consisted of six lesson plans and PowerPoint lectures. The topics covered in the lectures included macronutrients, micronutrients, hydration, supplements, and nutrient timing. After each lecture a quiz was given to evaluate student understanding based on the lecture objectives. In addition to the quizzes, a pretest and posttest questionnaire were given and consisted of the same eight multiple-choice questions, with the exception that the posttest had additional open-ended questions. To address the research questions a mixed methods design was used. The curriculum consisted of a 3-week workshop, meeting twice a week for 45 minutes. In order to measure the increase in nutrition knowledge, quantitative data were collected through the pre and posttest questionnaire results. Out of 37 students, 30 completed both the pre and posttest. A paired samples t-test was used to measure the increase in nutrition knowledge. Qualitative data were collected from the posttest open-ended questions and the evaluation forms completed by the experts. Results suggests that the sports nutrition curriculum increased nutrition knowledge among the high school athletes by an average of 32 % and was shown to be statistically significant. The comments and suggestions obtained from the open-ended posttest questionnaire were all positive, where 100 % of the participants made some kind of dietary changes in their diets. The feedback and comments presented from experts were all positive. It was shown that the implementation of the sports nutrition curriculum for high school athletes increased nutrition knowledge.