Stear On Nutrition In Action Panel

 

by James Skitt - 02.12.08

English Insitute of Sport (EIS) National Nutrition Lead Dr Samantha Stear appeared as a leading expert at Nestlé’s 5th International Nutrition Symposium last week, forming part of a panel debating Nutrition in Action.

Stear, whose EIS role includes being Lead Nutritionist to UK Athletics, supported Team GB athletes in their final prepartions for Beijing at the holding camp in Macau  earlier this year and gave insight to delegates on her practical experiences of performance nutrition as part of a debate on the proper use of nutrition during training, performance and recovery.

Chaired by Erik Zaltas, Lead Manager of Nutritional Science and Athlete Performance at Nestlé, Stear sat alongside two elite performers in Gunn-Rita Dahle (pictured), an eight time world champion mountain biker, and Faris Al-Sultan, a five times Ironman winner and former Ironman world champion, who shared their experiences of nutrition from an athlete perspective.

“We welcomed being able to support Nestle, one of the EIS Performance Nutrition partners, at this engaging and important symposium on performance nutrition” Stear told eis2win.co.uk. “It is a useful opportunity for the the EIS nutrition team to be the ‘voice of reason’ to provide the audience with information to put the elite athletes’ practices into perspective for both a wider range of sporting activities and for both elite and recreational athletes alike. Personally, I also feel that industry-led symposiums serve as a useful reminder to those of us at the coal face of the huge amount of scientific research that goes into the development of nutrition products and supplements.”

The event, held at the Nestlé Research Center in Lausanne, coincided with Nestlé’s announcement that they are to expand their research programme on the specific nutritional needs of athletes engaged in different kinds of sports. The programme will provide data to help support a more personalised approach to sports nutrition in the future which, it is hoped, could lead to a new generation of personalised sports nutrition products for leading athletes.

“From the reasearch comes the products and then follows the technical application of products into practice to help support all athletes during training and competition” Stear says. “It’s therefore important that products are coupled with evidence-based information to help educate consumers to empower them to make appropriate choices to support their training and competition - symposiums like these are a useful tool for transfering information. In summary, the key message is that we need to help educate and inform athletes in order for them to be empowered to personalize their own individual needs in particualr in terms of hydration, fuel and recovery.  Get the diet and performance nutrition support right and it’ll fuel their training to help them reach their goals.”

You can now watch a webcast of the debate by clicking here and selecting ‘Nutrition in Action’ from the drop down list.

Photography © Getty Images