Building strong evidence for elite sports nutrition: Vitafoods preview

A lot of talk has focussed on how non-sporty consumers are driving the market, but what about the potential for industry by targeting elite athletes? First, industry must understand the unique demands of top level performance, says Jeni Pearce from the English Institute Sport.

Sports nutrition is an ever growing market, which according to Euromonitor was worth 4.7 billion US dollars in 2009, but much of this market is focused on sports nutrition for the ‘non-sport’ consumer.

Jeni Pearce, head of performance nutrition at the English Institute Sport and performance nutritionist for the England cricket team told Nutraingredients that the nutritional supplement industry needs to better understand the unique demands of elite sports, but by working together with athletes and nutritionists manufacturers have an opportunity to develop superior products, with a better evidence base.

“I think its misguided of manufacturers to think that they can take generic products and move them up [to elite sports], because we are very specific about what we need and how we need it,” explained Pearce

Jeni will be at forthcoming Vitafoods Europe conference and expo, where she will talk about applying performance nutrition to elite sports to maximising performance.