The Remote Food Photography Method Is Valid for Assessing Dietary Intake of Serie A Football Players

To ensure football players meet their nutritional demands, sport nutritionists need to accurately collect and analyse dietary intake. However, dietary assessment

Methods: have limitations. The Remote Food Photography

Method: (RFPM) is a valid approach, but the validation in real-life settings requires further investigations. This study

Aims: to evaluate validity, accuracy and agreement of analysing energy and macronutrient intake using the RFPM in Serie A football players. Twenty players collected food intake over six nonconsecutive post-training meals representative of three typical training days. Players independently served themselves food from the club's canteen; plates were then weighed and consequently photographed. Energy, carbohydrate (CHO), protein and fat intake were analysed. RFPM demonstrated a very large validity between weighed and estimated values for CHO (rrmcorr (repeated measure correlation) = 0.87, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.82-0.92, p < 0.05), protein (rrmcorr = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.81-0.92, p < 0.05), fat (rrmcorr = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.81-0.92, p < 0.05) and energy intake (rrmcorr = 0.85, 95% CI: 0.78-0.90, p < 0.05). Good agreement was observed for CHO -0.83 [-24.41 to 22.75] g, protein 3.23 [-10.87 to 17.33] g, fat 0.85 [-6.96 to 8.66] g and energy 17.27 [-160.41 to 194.95] kcal. There was no systematic bias. Moderate accuracy and acceptable precision, consistent over different training days, were demonstrated for CHO, protein and energy intake. Intra-operator reliability, performed by repeating 30% of the estimations by the same operator, was good for CHO (CV = 4.7%), protein (CV = 3.6%) and energy (CV = 3.8%) and acceptable for fat intake (CV = 7.8%). The study confirms the RFPM is accurate and reliable for assessing energy and macronutrient intake of elite football players in a real-training environment.