Knowledge about nutrition of physical educators in a sport club at the city of Santo André

Abstract

Practitioners of physical activity are influenced by physical educators, because of the direct contact. The search for healthy food has grown increasingly along with the interest and demand for nutritional supplements with sporting and beauty purposes. The prescription of these products is often done by physical educators, and when done wrongly, does not reach the expected goals by the athlete and physical activity practitioner. It is noteworthy that nutritionists would be the qualified professionals for prescribing nutritional supplements. This study aimed to evaluate the nutrition knowledge of the physical education professionals working in a sport club located in Santo André City. This is a transversal research involving graduating students and professionals graduated in Physical Education, all voluntary and informed consent. The questionnaire used was composed by 15 questions that should be judged as "true" or "false." Of the 21 respondents, 52.4% were male, with an average age of 30 years old and 71.4% were graduates or postgraduates. The main error responses to the questionnaire were related to nutritional supplements used routinely and energetic function of macronutrients, especially carbohydrates. More than half (57%) of respondents believed, erroneously, that the pineapple was able to oxidize body fat. The average number of correct answers in relation to the professional practice time was higher in professionals with less than 1 year of acting. Therefore, the results indicated that the participants had insufficient general knowledge about nutrition to make prescriptions of dietary requirements and nutritional supplements in a safe way.