Good nutrition is extremely important for everyone, not just soccer players. Healthy diets enable children to grow, develop and do well in school and in sports. Also a healthy diet significantly reduces the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancers, diabetes, stroke and osteoporosis. Eating right can also reduce the risk of obesity, high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol. So what can be referred to as “good nutrition?”
Basically “good nutrition” means getting both enough calories and the proper nutrients from your food intake. Most people including soccer players, eat more food (calories) than their body needs. This can lead to obesity which is the precursor for a lot of diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. Just because someone is exceeding the daily calorie intake, doesn’t necessarily mean his getting the required nutrients.
A diet which includes adequate amounts of bread, cereal, grain, rice, pasta, vegetables, fruits and limits the intake of high fat foods can promote great health and help reduce the development of chronic diseases. But what foods should you provide to your children and in what quantity?
Nutritional requirements change throughout the child’s life cycle. The number of calories and the amount of specific nutrients required will vary based on age, sex, reproductive stage, activity level and overall health of the child. Also variation in needs can be seen across different cultural, religious and regional groups.
This is a brief overview of the importance of nutrition. As this site grows will tackle more specialised areas of nutrition and diets.
There is an obsession now with sports drinks and supplements in sport and we have to fight this in kids soccer. We need to teach them the basics of nutrition – getting what they need from normal food before we even think about feeding them sugar water or protein.
I am certainly not “Mr Anti-Supplements”, I just feel that if we allow kids to go down the easy/short-cut route so early on, what does that teach them for the future?