Abstract:

Nutrition is a very important issue for health and development. Eating behavior is the basis for a young person's physical development, health and identity and is shaped by a wide variety of factors, including knowledge, attitudes, sociodemographic characteristics, and behavioral, family and lifestyle factors. The direct proportional relationship between balanced and good nutrition and athletic performance is well known. This is even more important for students studying in the field of sports. This study was carried out in order to evaluate the attitudes of the students of the faculty of sports sciences about healthy nutrition according to the sports branch (team or individual). The study was carried out on students studying at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Faculty of Sport Sciences. In order to determine the healthy nutrition attitudes of the participants, the Attitude Scale for Healthy Nutrition (ASHN) was applied beside the personal information form in which demographic information and sports branch were questioned. A total of 554 students from the Faculty of Sport Sciences, 206 women and 348 men, participated in the research voluntarily. Kolmogorov Smirnov test was used to determine if the datas were suitable for normal distribution or not. Independent-Samples T-test was used to compare the groups. One Way Anova in multiple comparisons, and Tukey HSD tests were used to determine the group that made the difference in the comparison result. While the ASHN values of the female students participating in the research were found to be 73.11  12.77, the ASHN values of the male students were determined as 75.60  12.27 (p0.05). According to the findings obtained in the study, the attitudes of the Faculty of Sport Sciences students towards healthy nutrition differ according to whether they do team sports or individual sports in all sub-dimensions. As a result of the tests, it can be said that male athletes had better attitudes towards healthy eating than female athletes, and athletes from individual sports branches had better attitudes towards healthy eating compared to team sports athletes.

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