Abstract:

Introduction: Healthy eating and physical activity help in the quality of life and are fundamental in the well-being of the individual as they act to prevent and treat various pathologies. The search for food supplements is increasing, as they improve aesthetics and performance, however, this indication is often performed by unqualified professionals. The prescription of these products must be performed by the nutritionist, since he has knowledge about the needs and risks. Objective: To investigate the knowledge of bodybuilders in sports nutrition and the prevalence of indication of dietary supplements by untrained individuals. Materials and methods: Descriptive research, with a quantitative approach and cross-sectional. An adapted questionnaire was applied to 180 bodybuilders. Results: The results showed that there was a predominance of females (56.1%), with the majority of respondents attending the gym for more than 12 months (63.3%) and not using supplements (63.89%). and only a minority (27.7%) of those surveyed used the indication of a nutritionist. It was found that knowledge in sports nutrition is still scarce, since there was a high rate of errors in questions related to the risks of excess protein (78.3%) and they were unaware of questions related to carbohydrate (70%). Conclusion: there were many misconceptions related to sports nutrition. Despite the participants correlating well the purpose of the supplements, errors related to the knowledge of macronutrients still persist. Therefore, the need for nutritionist guidance for prescription and clarification on issues related to sports nutrition is evident.

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