WAVE Project: Sport Nutrition Education Resources

Abstract

The WAVE~Ripples for Change: Obesity Prevention in Active Youth (WAVE) project’s primary objective is to prevent unhealthy weight gain among high school athletes through healthy eating and reduced sedentary time. Educators are familiar with the myriad of challenges in presenting nutrition, diet, and physical activity information to high school students. WAVE uses adolescent athletes’ interest in sport to draw them into the topic of sport nutrition and healthy eating; helping them apply the knowledge and skills they learned in class, on the field, and in their lives. WAVE developed and field-tested an after-school program for high school athletes that includes 7 sport nutrition lessons (30 to 45 minutes each) and 3 team-building, family and consumer sciences life-skill workshops. WAVE also developed a cloud-based data management system to support the tracking of learner profiles, survey administration, big data visualization, and automated health report generation.

Keywords

• sport nutrition
• adolescent athletes
• active youth
• experiential learning
• youth development