Supplement use and nutritional habits in Norwegian elite athletes

The purpose of this study was to examine nutritional and supplemental habit s among international alpine- and cross-country skiers and power sport athl etes in Norway. Data from all the athletes of the National alpine skiing te am (ALP; n=33, 19 men and 14 women) and the National crosscountry skiing te am (CRO; n=34, 17 men and 17 women) plus a mixed group of power sport athle tes (POW: n=33, all men) from the National teams of boxers, weightlifters a nd track and field athletes, were collected through a semi-structured inter view during their annual medical examination. Twenty percent of all the ath letes reported unsatisfactory nutritional habits (CRO 6%, ALP 27% and POW 2 7%; CRO vs. ALP/ POW P<0.05). Eighty-four percent used one or more micronut rient supplement (ALP 70%, POW 88%, CRO 95%; ALP vs. CRO/POW P<0.01). Power sport athletes had the most frequent use of supplemental creatine (45%), p roteins/amino acids (30%), vitamins (88%) and minerals (82%), and CRO had t he most frequent intake of iron (94%), vitamin C (88%) and fish oils (91%). Among ALP, only 7% of the female athletes supplemented iron regularly comp ared to 37% of male ALP (P<0.05) Overall, male athletes supplemented mostly on a regular basis and female athletes more on an occasional basis. The re sults show that in spite of differences between sport groups, many elite at hletes report unsatisfactory nutritional habits. Micronutrient supplementat ion was prevalent, but varied between both groups of sports and gender.