Implementation of Nutrition Labels at the 2022 European Athletics Championships: An Observational Study of the Use and Perceptions of Athletes and Athlete Support Personnel.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Nutrition labels are an effective tool for providing nutrition information. Additionally, nutrient composition is one of the most dictating factors for athletes' food choices; thus, we aimed to evaluate the use and perceptions regarding the nutrition labels implemented for the meals served at the 2022 European Athletics Championships (EAC).

METHODS

During mealtime at the team restaurants, participants completed an online self-administered questionnaire. We collected 280 questionnaires, 53.8% of the participants were male, most were athletes (78.9%), and 21.1% were athlete support personnel. Likert-type scales and open-ended questions were included to measure the labels' importance, layout, influence on food choices, and participants' understanding of the labels. Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare answers.

RESULTS

Almost 40% of the participants used the nutrition labels occasionally (38.8%). Most participants were confident (41.9%) or moderately confident (31.3%) in making food choices because they had labels. Nutrition labels were considered important (41.0%) or very important (28.4%) by most participants, and 91.7% would like to have them in future championships. Athlete support personnel versus athletes ( = 0.037) and participants with dietary restrictions versus participants without ( = 0.028) were more confident in their food choices due to nutrition labels.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results highlight that nutrition labels were helpful for both athletes and athlete support personnel during this EAC and that they should be maintained in future competitions.