By 2060, more than half of the U.S. and Europe population will consist of people from different cultural backgrounds. Sports dietitians must be knowledgeable about the fuelling preferences of athletes of various ethnicities and cultures, and also consider using fuelling opportunities to educate all athletes about other foods and cultures. To do this, sports dietitians should learn and understand the definition of culture and cultural competence:

Culture: the accumulation of a group’s learned and shared behaviors in everyday life. It is the lens we use to view and understand people’s beliefs, customs, and knowledge.

Cultural competence: cultural competence is an ever-evolving process of examining one’s own attitudes and acquiring the values, knowledge, skills, and attributes that will allow an individual to interact with other cultures.

Once the ability to notice and respect these differences is consistently considered in the sport setting, showing regard toward the cultural norms that are not your own builds rapport as well as enhances a sports dietitian’s ability to appropriately fuel all athletes.

Here’s how you can get started fuelling your athletes with cultural competence:

• Become familiar with your own attitudes about individuals from different cultures and use resources to gain the knowledge, skills and techniques to make you a culturally competent sports dietetic professional.
• Have an open dialogue with your international athletes about foods that are familiar to them and work with the dining staff to have those food or snack options available at training tables, fuelling stations or in the cafeteria.
• Look for opportunities to have conversations with all of your athletes, not just those who might come from a different background than your own, about the food practices of different cultures.
• Explain sports nutrition performance and recovery concepts using foods that are familiar, tolerated, accessible and well liked for your international students to ensure they adhere to any sports nutrition guidance they receive.
• When possible, utilize spice blends, herbs, sauces or marinades that can create a sense of familiarity for your international athletes in the event foods they are accustom to eating have import restrictions on them.

Understanding what someone eats and why they eat it is key to nutrition education and can help athletes perform at their highest potential.

Culturally competent fuelling with potatoes: ideas for the Sports nutrition professional or coaches.

Implement Culturally Competent Training Tables:

• Think of ways to introduce athletes to other cuisines and potato dishes as a part of your training tables.
• Showcase that potatoes prepared in a range of ways are the ideal pre-, during- and post-exercise culturally competent whole food fuelling source that your athletes can rely on for optimal performance and recovery.
  

Introduce Culturally Competent Teaching Kitchens:

• If you have the ability to do cooking classes or teaching kitchens, consider an ethnic cuisine not common to your athletes and use it as an education opportunity.
• Enable all of your athletes to gain hands-on experiences with ethnic food preparation styles and seasonings to help introduce, familiarize and normalize these concepts.
• Let athletes choose what potato dishes they would like to try from that cuisine to help fuel their performance and recovery.

Enabling Cultural Competence In The Cafeteria:

• Provide culturally inspired performance nutrition recipes to team chefs.
• Take an active role in encouraging the dining hall/cafeteria food-service staff to prepare one culturally competent meal per day that makes use of potatoes.
• A medium (5.3 oz.) skin on potato provides 3 g (6% of the daily value) of plant-based protein per serving, an option to fuel and replenish your plant-based athletes.

 
No matter the culture or country your players come from, they need certain nutrients to perform at their best. Potatoes have crucial nutrients for performance and recovery, and the versatility of potatoes provides familiarity on the plate as well as the flexibility to be a whole food solution for fuelling in a culturally competent way. Potatoes are a food common to almost every culture in the world, yet, are prepared and consumed in a variety of ways, typically through using unique blends of spices, sauces and herbs. Any spice or herb blend can be used to season any potato in any preparation.

Let’s explore these unique mixtures of seasonings as well as how each culture prepares and enjoys potatoes:

Africa

• Berbere: common in Ethiopia and Somalia: hot peppers, black pepper, coriander, cinnamon and cloves.
• Dukkah: hazelnuts, sesame seeds, coriander and cumin.
• Harissa: hot chili peppers, garlic, cumin, coriander, caraway and mint.
• Ras El Hanout: cardamom, clove, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, paprika, mace, nutmeg, peppercorn.

Europe

• Fines herbs: chervil, chives, tarragon, and parsley.
• Herbes de Provence: savory, rosemary, marjoram and thyme.
• Khmeli Suneli: fenugreek seeds, coriander, savory, black pepper and dill.
• Quatre epices: ground white pepper, cloves, nutmeg and ginger.

India

• Chaat Masala: dried mango powder, cumin, coriander, dried ginger, salt, black pepper and chili powder.
• Curry powder: turmeric, coriander, cumin, fenugreek and red pepper.
• Garam Masala: cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, cumin, coriander, black peppercorns, nutmeg and red chilies.
• Panch Phoron: fenugreek, nigella, cumin, black mustard and fennel seed

Asia

• Chinese five spices: anise, peppercorns, cloves, fennel, coriander and cinnamon.
• Gomasio: toasted sesame seeds and salt.
• Togarashi: chilies, dried citrus peel, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, hemp seeds, ginger, garlic and nori.

Potatoes are a pre, during or post-exercise whole food and applying any one of these spice blends is a good way to prevent sweet flavour fatigue and ensure your athletes are meeting all their nutritional needs.

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