It is important for young sports players in their developmental phase to take not only adequate nutrition for growth but also that appropriate for the intensity of exercise. For future nutritional education, we investigated the physical status and eating habits of junior/senior high school girls playing football.
In seventeen junior and eight high school students belonging to a girls’ football team in Tokyo and twenty senior high school students without habitual exercise (controls), we measured the height, body weight, body fat, muscle volume, grip strength, vital capacity, and bone mass, and conducted surveys on the frequency of food intake.
In the senior high school player group, the body weight, percent body fat, fat volume, muscle volume, left/right arm/leg muscle volumes, osteo sono assessment index, Z score of bone mass, vital capacity, and forced vital capacity were significantly greater than in the junior high school player group. On the other hand, energy intake was similar between the senior and junior high school player groups. However, calcium/iron intake was slightly lower in the former. The results of this survey showed that, the possibility of calcium/iron deficiency were indicated, suggesting the importance of nutritional education for junior athletes to promote an exercise intensity-matched diet.