Implementation of Nutrition Labels at the 2022 European Athletics Championships: An Observational Study of the Use and Perceptions of Athletes and Athlete Support Personnel.

Background/objectives: Nutrition labels are an effective tool for providing nutrition information. Additionally, nutrient composition is one of the most dictating factors for athletes' food choices; thus, we aimed to evaluate the use and perceptions regarding the nutrition labels implemented for the meals served at the 2022 European Athletics Championships (EAC).

Methods: During mealtime at the team restaurants, participants completed an online self-administered questionnaire. We collected 280 questionnaires, 53.8% of the participants were male, most were athletes (78.9%), and 21.1% were athlete support personnel. Likert-type scales and open-ended questions were included to measure the labels' importance, layout, influence on food choices, and participants' understanding of the labels. Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare answers.

Results: Almost 40% of the participants used the nutrition labels occasionally (38.8%). Most participants were confident (41.9%) or moderately confident (31.3%) in making food choices because they had labels. Nutrition labels were considered important (41.0%) or very important (28.4%) by most participants, and 91.7% would like to have them in future championships. Athlete support personnel versus athletes ( = 0.037) and participants with dietary restrictions versus participants without ( = 0.028) were more confident in their food choices due to nutrition labels.

Conclusions: Our results highlight that nutrition labels were helpful for both athletes and athlete support personnel during this EAC and that they should be maintained in future competitions.