Diet and physical development of youth male footballers
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The association of diet composition with healthy physical development in youth academy male players from an English Premier League club.
IRAS ID
338967
Contact name
Alan McCall
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Arsenal Football Club
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
4 years, 2 months, 1 days
Research summary
Optimising nutritional strategies in young football players is challenging but also essential for the children’s optimal growth, maturation and development as children. Accordingly, it is important to monitor and accommodate for individual differences in growth and maturation throughout the players throughout their youth development journey in order to ensure their optimal support and development.
This study will monitor 178 players in a professional football club’s male youth Academy with repeated measures of individuals over a prolonged period of time with the intention to evaluate the association(s) between nutritional practices (dietary intakes) and the healthy physical development of youth academy boys and girls belonging to a world-class football team.
Specifically we aim to determine the association(s) that nutritional intake of macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, fat) and micronutrients (e.g. calcium, vitamin D) has on the developing body composition using dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) with simple measures of height and body weight to examine the body mass (BM), fat mass (FM), fat-free soft tissue mass (FFSTM), bone mineral density (BMD) and bone mineral content (BMC). The information will be used to investigate longitudinally if there is an association between the nutritional intakes of players with the development of the aforementioned body composition measures.
REC name
London - Surrey Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/LO/0367
Date of REC Opinion
10 Jun 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion