There are many facets that can influence the foods athletes choose and thus impact on achieving optimal nutrition, hydration, body composition goals and gut comfort. Despite this there are a limited number of studies exploring these determinants in athletes and no validated tool for understanding athlete food choices.
PURPOSE: This research aimed to develop and validate an Athlete Food Choice Questionnaire (AFCQ) to determine the key factors influencing food choice in an international cohort of athletes.
METHODS: A preliminary questionnaire containing 84 items on a 5-point frequency scale was developed and used to collect the first sample from athletes at the 2017 Universiade, Taiwan. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was conducted on this sample to identify key factors and develop the AFCQ. A second sample was collected using the AFCQ at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, Australia. The second sample was analysed via Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to validate the factorial structure. Descriptive analyse of the combined samples was used to examine the AFCQ sensitivity in detecting differences in factor ratings between athlete cohorts.
RESULTS: Sample one (n=156) contained athletes from 31 countries and 17 sports. The PCA extracted 36 questionnaire items organised into nine factors explaining 68.0% of variation. Sample two (n=232) contained athletes from 45 countries and 20 sports. The final model confirmed the nine constructs from the PCA, these were: ‘nutritional attributes of the food’, ‘emotional influences’, ‘food and health awareness’, ‘influence of others’, ‘usual eating practices’, ‘weight control’, ‘food values and beliefs’, ‘sensory appeal’ and ‘performance’. The CFA resulted in a good model fit (χ2=685.2, df= 428, χ2/df = 1.60, p < 0.01) with the removal of four items, reducing the number of items to three per factor. The AFCQ was successful in distinguishing differences between factor ratings across demographic characteristics including gender, athlete caliber and sporting type.
CONCLUSION: Simple enough to be utilsed with athletes from a diverse range of sports, this new tool will enable researchers and sports dietitians to better tailor nutrition education and dietary interventions to suit the individual or team.