Sports Science Exchange Roundtable 45

INTRODUCTION Athletes—and lots of non-athletes—gulp vitamin pills in tremendous quantities, but most experts tell us that only a small number of athletes will notice any benefit of vitamin supplements on their health or sport performance. Is it O.K. to take vitamin supplements as an insurance policy, in case your diet does not supply sufficient vitamins? Can bad things happen if you take too many vitamins? Are synthetic vitamin pills just as good as vitamins from natural foods? We posed these and other questions to experts who have outstanding backgrounds in the field of sports nutrition. Dan Benardot is co-director of the Laboratory for Elite Athlete Performance at Georgia State University. He was national team nutritionist for USAGymnastics from 1991-1997 and has authored Nutrition for Serious Athletes (Human Kinetics) plus numerous articles in sports nutrition. Priscilla Clarkson, Past President of the American College of Sports Medicine, has written extensively on vitamins in sport and has studied sports nutrition for many years, especially in dancers. Ellen Coleman is the author of two books (Bull Publishing): Ultimate Sports Nutrition (2000) and Eating for Endurance (1997). She is also the nutrition columnist for Sports Medicine Digest and lectures extensively on the dietary needs of athletes and active people. Ms. Coleman has completed numerous marathons and 200-mile bicycle races and is a two-time finisher of the Hawaii Ironman triathlon. Melinda Manore is an expert on the nutritional requirements of active women, nutrition assessment, and the role that nutrition and exercise play in health, energy balance, obesity, and disordered eating. She is Chair of the Research Group of the American Dietetic Association and is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). Prof. Manore writes the nutrition column for the ACSM’s Health and Fitness Journal . She also co-authored Sports Nutrition for Health and Performance (Human Kinetics), and she has served as a nutrition consultant for the Arizona State University intercollegiate teams and for individual professional athletes.