Misinformation on nutrition in the fitness space is rife! Fitness nutrition cowboys with no education whatsoever are more than happy to hand out dietary advice. From detrimental diets like the cotton ball diet (soaking cotton wool in juice to reduce calories) to the Hallelujah diet (only eating things mentioned in the Bible book of Genesis), there is no limit to the amount of ‘fake news’ nutrition advice about that, if followed, could wreak havoc on a person’s health or result in death.
For every amazing fitness professional who is trained in exercise and nutrition, there is a handful that wouldn’t give a second thought to touting the craziest fad trends simply for views on Tik Tok or Instagram. This is one of the reasons, the founder of the Sports Nutrition Association, Alex Thomas, decided it was time to regulate the industry throughout Australia, New Zealand, USA, the UK and Europe.
What is the purpose of the Sports Nutrition Association?
The Sports Nutrition Association is a governing body providing set standards for those in the fitness and wellness industry, including PTs, exercise physiologist, strength coaches and clinical nutritionists, set to reduce the amount of misinformation and dangerous nutrition advice through education and accreditation. They also have a database for public use that allow people to search for accredited sports nutritionist in their local area.
Thomas believes the amount of complaints within both print and digital media is detrimental to the nutrition industry. “Those looking for personal trainers will often search online and the clients selects them based on their looks or the type of training they offer. With training and nutrition going hand in hand, clients tend to forget to ask about their qualifications about nutrition. We want to ensure the industry standards of advice non-dieticians are sharing are safe and effective.”
Not all personal trainers want to devote their time and money to training in nutrition, but given a client is likely to ask nutrition questions of their personal trainers to help achieve tier training goals, it’s a good idea to undertake an industry-approved course.
Sports Nutrition Association are helping tackle misinformation about nutrition advice by helping provide a course in Applied Sports Nutrition. The course doesn’t delve too deeply into particular fields of nutrition, but provides good insight into whether becoming provisionally accredited is something of interest to them.
They also offer a reporting function that allows public for to report those who are failing to meet the industry best standards.