Senior linebacker Audie Cole making a bone-crunching tackle against an opposing player, sophomore forward Nazmi Albadawi running rings around an opponent and scoring a goal, or senior Ryan Hill winning the ACC championship are all amazing feats. They make us wonder — what do these athletes do that sets them apart from everyone else?
One of the most important components that helps them succeed in their respective field is the type of food they eat. What goes on behind each individual athlete’s diet is more than meets the eye.
N.C . State has two dining halls that cater to athletes, Case and Murphy. Athletes from different sports can eat the same type of food, but that’s hardly the case. According to Jennifer Brunelli , director of sports nutrition, dietary plans for athletes vary from sport to sport.
“For sports like football and basketball, you are looking to have more mass on your body. So we need to think about how many calories we can get into them with real foods first and then working from there,” Brunelli said. “For track and field and swimming, which tend to be leaner sports, we work on seeing where they can get their appropriate amount of calories and nutrients.
“Our main goal is to make sure they are having a lot of energy and nutrients without being unbalanced.”
Brunelli felt that the caloric intake and the type of foods needed by an athlete could be further broken down to the roles in their respective teams.
“There’s no particular food that we can say will be good for this athlete,” Brunelli noted. “It is really specific with what position they play within their sport and what is their body type already.”
Brunelli also revealed the University made use of extensive technology to ensure that the athletes ate what was absolutely appropriate for them.
“At N.C . State we have something called a ‘Bod-Tod ,'” Brunelli said. “Which is a body composition machine that allows us to put the athlete inside the machine and it will measure by air displacement and allows us to measure the fat mass and lean mass and give us the ratio of what’s going on within the specific individual.
“Depending on the sport and body composition make-up we receive, we then come up with some specific game plan as far as their meals go and kind off divide what they need to eat in terms of proteins, carbohydrates and calories.”
Training Table Meals, are defined as any meal other than a “regular dining hall meal” that are meant exclusively for members of an athletic team. They are crucial to any athletic team’s success, as they help in providing the athletes with the food that is crucial for them to perform at a high level.
Training table meals are very different in the fact that a lot of what is available to most students is not available for consumption for athletes according to Lisa Eberhart , registered dietician for dining and catering operations, who helped develop “Eat for Peak Performance”, N.C . State’s own training table program.
“We turn off all the soda machines, we only have Gatorade, juice and milk,” Eberhart noted. “We don’t have any whole milk, its only 1 percent milk or less. We turn off the ice cream at night. Desserts are only served on recovery days.”
Eberhart claimed that “Eat for Peak Performance”, which won a silver medal this summer in the Loyal E.Horton Dining Awards, used a very systematic procedure to guide the athletes toward what they should eat.
“We have an iPad app that tells athletes if they want to lose or gain weight and tells them what kinds of things on the menu that they can eat,” Eberhart said. “The way they are designed is that things are color coordinated; there are menu cards that say whether they are a lean protein source or if it’s a quality carbohydrate source or if it has high anti-oxidants which helps with muscle recovery and we mark those things in the dining hall.”
Any student with questions about their diet can setup an appointment with Lisa Eberhart by calling the Student Health Appointment Desk at 515-7107.
