WHY NUTRITION SUPPLEMENTS?
The need for nutrition supplements has arisen as a result of higher demands placed on both professional and amateur sportsmen and women. These demands come from the athletes themselves, the fans or supporters, the media and the sporting codes.
A good example is Super Rugby. A first-choice Super Rugby player can play up to 16 international level matches in 17 weeks, which includes international travel. Two decades ago, such a player might have played only 16 international level matches in a year.
Professionalism in sport has raised the standards and the stakes. Sports stars need to ensure they’re physically, mentally and emotionally prepared for competition. They need to ensure they’ve covered all their bases in this preparation. Strength and power training has become a significant part of the training schedules of most sportsmen and women. Training twice a day is now the norm and increased demand for energy and recovery is the result. Much as they’re recommended, balanced, whole-food diets are impractical to follow since the amount of food required to deliver the appropriate nourishment to meet the athletes’ needs is nearly impossible to consume. And even then, ‘natural’ foods these days lack the organic characteristic they once enjoyed with insecticides and rapid growth chemicals now widely used in farming.
WHAT DO SUPPLEMENTS DO?
Supplements contain ingredients that have been scientifically proven to aid with energy or recovery. Some do contain stimulants such as caffeine, but these are within the parameters of the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA).
Recreational athletes squeeze as much training as they can into their busy lives (work, family etc.). They too place high demand on their bodies and minds and are able to achieve their goals with the support of nutrition supplements. Convenience and being able to keep track of precise quantities of energy or recovery nutrients being consumed, thanks to product label information, make supplements almost compulsory for anyone with a desire to succeed or even improve in sport.
Martin Dreyer’s Change-a-Life athletes, all of whom come from poorly nourished homes in rural KwaZulu-Natal, have been able to attain significantly improved results through the incorporation of nutrition supplements into their daily diet. Through scientifically formulated nutrition supplements they now get the right balance and quantity of nutrients that they would never have been able to achieve before. These athletes are now finishing consistently on the podium at high profile endurance sports events like the Dusi Canoe Marathon.
PROFESSIONAL VS RECREATIONAL ATHLETES
While they share similar levels of commitment to their sport, there is a difference between professional and recreational sportsmen and women when it comes to risk with regard to supplements. Professional athletes are subjected to drug testing on a regular basis as part of the anti-doping policing system. This is to keep the playing fields as level as possible and prevent cheating. They are fully responsible for what goes into their bodies and this is why most of them choose supplements from established, respected brands like USN. There is no health risk to taking sport-specific supplements, which is why recreational athletes have no need to be concerned. It’s only professional level athletes that need to be wary of what they consume due to the possibility of consuming – even inadvertently – a substance on WADA’s prohibited list.
YOUTH CONCERNS
Since physical, mental and emotional development is still in progress among adolescent sportsmen and women, it’s important that they continue to develop at the most natural rate possible. But these days, increased pressure from peers, parents and the media has resulted in a worryingly high number of adolescents turning to the use of anabolic steroids or banned PEDs. Respected nutrition supplement brands like USN have minimum age recommendations on all product labels to guide parents, coaches and adolescent athletes. USN also has a Schools Education Programme, which educates and informs on safe and responsible supplement use amongst school children, including sessions on life orientation, an anti-doping message in context, sport specific support and general sports nutrition education.
INDUSTRY REGULATION
The nutrition supplement industry is currently unregulated. USN supports any initiatives – both private and governmental – aimed at changing this. Supplement industry regulation will help raise the credibility of the industry, which has sadly become tainted by unscrupulous brands that take advantage of the low barriers to entry with sub-standard products.
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