Introduction
In the never-ending quest to improve perfor-
mance, athletes and coaches are quick to embrace
almost any notion that promises quick success.
New ideas involving sports equipment, train-
ing techniques and nutritional interventions are
often greeted enthusiastically, put into practice
before ample testing has occurred, and touted
anecdotally as the latest and greatest idea to hit
the sporting world. While most scientists would
advise a more cautious approach to integrating
new ideas into an athlete’s training regimen, the
fact of the matter is that coaches and athletes
have always been and will always be the initial
arbiters of proposed innovations. More often
than not, in the time required for adequate
scientific evaluation, the idea has already been
superceded by the next ‘improvement’. This is
particularly so in the area of sports nutrition,
where there has historically been a rapid and
seemingly endless series of product introduc-
tions, some of which make remarkable claims for
superior performance.
Confronted with a constantly changing array
of sports nutrition products, the claims for which
can appear to bear convincing scientific support,
it is not surprising that athletes and coaches have
difficulty determining which claims are valid.
Considering that it often requires sports scien-
tists considerable time in the laboratory to sepa-
rate fact from fiction when it comes to claims for
sports nutrition products, it is entirely under-
standable that coaches and athletes find it impos-
sible to do the same. This confusion has resulted
from the plethora of commercial products tar-
geted at physically active people, from the in-
ability of government agencies to adequately
regulate the claims made for such products, from
the rapid turnover of sports nutrition products
in the marketplace, and from the confusion re-
sulting from the misuse of scientific claims.
Although there is little doubt that some sports
nutrition products provide demonstrable bene-
fits when properly used, the claims for other
products and nutritional interventions are often
dubious, ill-founded, unproven, or abysmally
deficient of scientific merit.
For the purpose of this chapter, sports nutri-
tionproductsand sports nutrition supplements
will be considered to be synonymous, as virtu-
ally all sports nutrition supplements are avail-
able as commercial products. Whereas it is
relatively easy to identify a sports nutrition
product by virtue of the advertising claims made
for it, it is more difficult to gain agreement on
what constitutes a sports nutrition supplement.What is a sports nutrition
supplement?
There is no consensus opinion on the definition
of a sports nutrition supplement. In the strictest
sense, sport nutritional supplements might be
defined as products that include only those
macro- or micronutrients included in dietary
guidelines such as the US National Research
Council’s recommended dietary allowances