A Study on Footballers: Is the Mediterranean diet a Good Defender of the Gastrointestinal System?

Abstract

In football, diet has a highly important role in the development of performance. Assessing the nutrition-related knowledge of footballers and increasing their awareness may affect their health and performance. In this study, which was carried out for this purpose, whether the Mediterranean diet had an effect on the gastrointestinal health of professional footballers was investigated. The sample of the study included a total of 196 active licensed male footballers who were professional players in the 2nd and 3rd football leagues of Turkey. The mean age of the participants was 23.46±4.18 and their mean experience in licensed football was 11.73±5.07 years. The adherence of the participants to the Mediterranean diet was assessed using the Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener, while the frequencies of gastrointestinal symptoms were examined using the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale. The data were transferred to the SPSS 26.0 program and analyzed using Pearson’s Correlation Analysis, Independent-Samples T-Tests, One-Way ANOVA and descriptive statistics. According to the results of the analyses, no significant relationship was found between adherence to the Mediterranean diet and gastrointestinal symptoms (p>0.05). While the gastrointestinal symptom scores of the participants did not vary significantly based on their league tiers or positions (p>0.05), their Mediterranean diet adherence scores varied significantly based on their league tiers (p<0.05). Consequently, it was determined that the adherence of the participants to the Mediterranean diet increased as their league tier increased, but adherence to the Mediterranean diet did not create any positive or negative effect on their gastrointestinal system symptoms.