Promoting healthy eating in the community sport setting: a scoping review

Abstract

Summary Community sport organizations promote beneficial health outcomes such as social connection and physical activity, yet they can also facilitate the consumption of unhealthy food and beverages. To provide a foundation for future research and to inform intervention efforts in this context, this scoping review summarizes existing knowledge of the factors that contribute to unhealthy food and beverage consumption in the community sport setting and explores the interventions to promote healthier choices. Using a qualitative process aligned with the nature of our aims, 228 articles were initially identified and subjected to a systemized appraisal, resulting in 45 articles pertinent to the review. The findings identify that the two key factors contributing to unhealthy food choices are the limited availability of healthy options within the sport setting and the presence of unhealthy food and beverage sponsorship. These factors contribute to the normalization of unhealthy eating in this context and health promotion interventions have had limited success. Barriers to change primarily stem from the revenue implications of removing unhealthy food sponsors, lack of organizational capabilities and resources, and consumer preference for unhealthy options. Public health practitioners seeking to intervene in this setting should consider adopting practices used in other settings outside of the sport environment, including the use of technology, the role of peers and mentors and the co-production of impactful material. Community sport plays a vital role in delivering health benefits but must do more to stem its facilitation of a potentially unhealthy consumptive environment.

Recreation Facility Food and Beverage Environments in Ontario, Canada: An Appeal for Policy

“…One of the primary barriers to healthier food environments in recreation and sport settings is the entrenched cultural norms attached to the expected food experience within these facilities [15,38,49]. Changing the food environment requires a paradigm shift.…”

“…Moreover, given the high levels of child and youth attendance [4], recreation facilities, similar to schools, are an environment with the potential to support the development of healthier preferences and have a measurable, lasting influence [5][6][7]. An unfortunate paradox is the poor nutritional quality of the food prevalent in these settings, which are supposed to promote community well-being; the food environment within recreation facilities is typically unhealthy [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. A key reason is the pervading availability of food vending machines and concession-style food services.…”

“…As Allender et al [29] found in Victoria, Australia, promoting healthy food may not be a priority for local governments; key informants reported that food policies lacked relevance or was outside of their mandate, a sentiment also reflected elsewhere [6,28,30,31]. There is also an increasing body of evidence on perceived barriers to policy development and implementation within recreation facilities, including competing priorities, fears of financial losses, lack of local champions, poor stakeholder buy-in, and cultural norms that favour unhealthy foods [15,28,29,32,33]. Ontario can learn from the experience of others.…”

“…The province of Ontario served as the comparative province for EPL, being without specific nutrition guidelines or policies governing municipal recreation and sport facilities. Most studies on food environments, with a few exceptions [15,29,30], examine what is offered for sale, but EPL also looked at what was actually sold. The primary objective of this paper was to provide a snapshot of the healthfulness of the food environment in a sample of municipally funded recreation and sport facilities across the province of Ontario, Canada, and how that was reflected in vending sales.…”

Adherence to Mediterranean diet in athletes: a narrative review

“…It is of concern that in the sport setting, diet is often addressed to enhance performance or esthetic aspects rather than health [15], and athletes may be at risk of moving away from healthy diet patterns to achieve specific goals, which may lead them to develop negative health consequences [16][17][18].…”