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Importance of sports nutrition for young India
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Tuesday, 12 July, 2022, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Vijayaraghavan Venugopal
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Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is not primarily a choice but is becoming a habit in the recent times. With the advent of the pandemic, it has become all the more important to start adapting to a healthy lifestyle.
Be it in urban centres or across tier 2 towns, the younger generation is facing a lot of health-related concerns due to a sedentary lifestyle. Imbibing a sense of nutrition backed by sports science among the youth, especially aspiring athletes can go a long way to build a fundamentally fitter and more capable pool of talent for a sporting nation.
Indian athletes’ prolific performance of seven medals at the Tokyo Olympics, with a historic gold in the men’s javelin and Indian hockey men and women’s hockey team’s stupendous rise in the recent past are the biggest outcomes of a deeper focus of professional athletes on health and fitness as well as a very scientific and tailored approach to nutrition. And that’s where sports nutrition plays a pivotal role. Moreover, it’s important to first understand the fundamentals of sports nutrition.
What is sports nutrition?
Sports nutrition is primarily the practice of consuming a nutritious diet that enhances an athlete’s overall performance. Sports nutrition is used by competitive athletes and active persons to assist them reach their objectives. Individual objectives can be to increase lean mass, optimise body composition, or improve athletic performance. Athletes' nutritional demands span a broad range in sports nutrition. To improve sports performance, certain people and circumstances need additional instructions and information. Be it cricket or weightlifting; wrestling or swimming, sports nutrition helps in maintaining a proper intake of required minerals, vitamins, proteins, fats and so on to help the athletes stay in shape and perform their best.
Why does sports nutrition matter?
While sports nutrition is important for athletes, it is equally important for the younger population of our country to develop a healthy lifestyle. The youth in the country has become more mindful while picking up an active lifestyle due to the awareness around fitness and proper nutrition post-Covid. The days of assuming that young athletes should adhere to the same daily nutrition regimen as their parents are long gone. In order to meet their physical energy requirements and keep their blood sugar levels roughly constant throughout the day, young athletes must eat more regularly. The government is playing a pivotal role by promoting the idea of fitness on a larger level and making this way of life more accessible as well as aspirational.
This means that people today are looking for healthy diet options and are also choosing food supplements which fulfil their nutrition requirements. The sports nutrition market size in India is around Rs 1,300 crore in value and is expected to grow at a 22.8% CAGR by 2023 (Source- Euromonitor International Report). This is a promising data and indicative of the shift in the preferences of the consumers. People are becoming conscious of their choices leading to reduced consumption of carbonated drinks.
So far, foreign nutrition brands have dominated the industry by 80%, however Indian brands are now showing promising results with local manufacturing and international quality standards. Indian brands are spearheading the sports nutrition revolution with the wide range of effervescent products.
The sports nutrition or nutraceuticals sector has been growing dramatically across the globe as well. Today, it stands close to $25 billion as a global industry. Thus, companies involved in sports nutrition see this as an opportunity to research the market and take advantage of the rising demand. Many are driven by the fervour of making India the world's athletic superpower and desire to see Indian athletes reach the heights of their abilities. They also seek to end foreign players' monopoly on the market and turn India into a global exporter.
With the shortage of high-quality nutritional supplements, Indian athletes have always been in a disadvantageous position when competing globally so far. However, now, the sports nutrition companies are seeing this as an opportunity to grow awareness and adoption across grassroot and elite athletes to sustainably enhance their health and performance.
One of the main factors supporting the growth of the sports nutrition market in India is the expanding popularity of fitness and sports culture, combined with the rising number of sports clubs and training facilities. Aside from that, the demand for organic and natural sports nutrition products in the nation is being positively impacted by the growing knowledge of the presence and negative effects of synthetic substances in supplements and nutritional beverages. In order to reach more consumers, the major firms are now launching creative product versions with sugar substitutes.
Besides the government’s support to growing the local sports nutrition industry, Bollywood and influencers have also contributed to the growth and awareness of this sector. In the last 10 years, celebrities have started the trend of following a strong fitness regime and diet building a positive body image that has created a huge impact among their fans & youth.
Over the years, fitness has taken a new meaning of glorifying more sustainable goals beyond conventional norms. A fitter India is also running more marathons fuelling a running revolution in the country. This is a big reason for the sports nutrition market to gain muscle in the country.
Indian parents are also focussing on their child’s wellbeing by providing them with the right choice of health supplementation and active lifestyle. The impact of the right foods, safe nutraceutical products, and intake of the right amount of minerals are crucial for everyone during their growth years as well.
However, we should keep in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all formula for figuring out young athletes' nutritional requirements. Sports nutrition is highly individualised and is influenced by a variety of variables, including age, weight, sport type, and intensity of training. It is important to place a special emphasis on developing diets that match each individual young athlete in order to maximise your child's potential in all areas, including physical, mental, and social development.
Challenges for the industry
The two major challenges that the sports nutrition industry is facing today is the lack of proper education about nutrition as well as the rise of counterfeit products that not only take away genuine products from reaching and benefiting consumers but also lead to an erosion of trust and confidence.
We must overcome these challenges by creating sustained awareness about adopting sports nutrition for the youth and the young sporting athletes as it will also help to solve the problems of counterfeit items and reduce the market share of legitimate goods, raise prices, and undermine consumer confidence.
We also need strong regulations making it mandatory for the manufacturers to print the key ingredients on the packaging to avoid fraud and ensure safe and quality nutrition.
Having said that, the prospect of the sports nutrition industry growth is looking in the green and we can expect that the market for nutraceuticals and nutrition supplements will steadily grow in India in the coming years.
(The author is CEO & co-founder, Fast&Up)
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