Adequate dietary intake and the correct balance of macronutrients and micronutrients, with appropriate timing to enhance performance and recovery, will enable athletes to train and perform optimally. However, there is a high variability of game characteristics between sports, between positions and playing styles within the same sport, and from one match to the next. Team sports share the common feature of intermittent high-intensity activity patterns. The International Olympic Committee released a statement on sports nutrition in 2010 and nutritional intake guidelines for athletes in 2016 in order to satisfy the diversity of physiological challenges and nutritional needs for team sport athletes. While there is a unanimous agreement on the need to design and implement nutrition-specific intervention programs for team sport players, there is scarce information on the eating habits and correlations of the nutritional behavior of these players. Understanding the influence of these factors is essential for the design and implementation of effective dietary and nutrition education programs, in order to optimize performance and health through nutrient intake.
However, dietary assessment may be biased due to misreporting. The aim of our project is to investigate the occurrence of misreporting in a sample of collegiate team sport athletes. The study is carried on by a multidisciplinary research team including, sport dietitians, graduates in sport science, nutritionists.