The Texting Athlete: Using Text and Picture Messages to Record Food Intake at Sporting Events

Abstract

To offer better nutrition education to student athletes, nutrition educators and coaches must understand which foods and beverages athletes are consuming. Asking athletes to record food intake during the training season can be difficult, especially on competition days. With stress levels high and concentration focused on the sporting event, most athletes do not wish to carry around a pen and paper to record their food intake. Using digital food records, such as text messaging and food photography, can make dietary intake recording easier for athletes. For this project, athletes on a college swim team were asked to use digital records to report their food and beverage intake during 2 swim meets. Information was collected in real time using mobile phone text and picture messaging. This innovative approach allows for increased cooperation and more accurate dietary assessment compared with traditional recording methods. As documented by previous studies, this recall method may help eliminate bias and food omissions because food recording can occur in real time.