Hong Kong 8-12-Year-Old Autistic Swimmer Dietary Habits And Health Status

Purpose:Research people with autism often display stereotypical behavior and are inflexible to deal with changes in daily routine. One of their stereotypical behavior includes picky eating. However, picky eating casts adverse effects in training and performance of athletes with autism. This research focuses on 8-12 years old swimmers with autism. After observing their undesirable eating habits, recommendations regarding food and nutrition of these athletes are explained to their parents. After interventions are made on the food intake of the above athletes, they are observed to see whether their food and nutrition are thereby improved.Method:Questionnaire and food weighting are conducted with to 8-12 swimmers with autism and their parents to get information about their knowledge, attitude and behavior in food and nutrition. A two-day food intake weighting was then conducted and the data on food intake weighting was input to Food Nutrient Calculator of the HKSAR Centre of Food Safety. Information gathered is compared with recommended intake of the HKSAR Food Safety Centre to discover the most problematic area for improvement.Results:Survey founded that parents are lacking of the knowledge of Macronutrient, not familiarize with those Zinc-rich and Iron-rich food, leading to the unbalance diet of athletes, under absorption of carbon hydrates, zinc and iron but, on the other hand over absorption of fat. Nutrition attitude and behavior survey result,80% of parents believe that athletes think reasonable diet can improve the level of training. Athletes are the most often drink water and carbonated drinks; Choose according to personal taste when food; Most of the athletes sometimes drink milk and eat snacks; Lunch and dinner will eat a lot every day; Most are picky about food habit, but can concentrate on eating. Weight increase dietary changes before and after the intervention, the athletes eat breakfast, and eat dinner weight reduction; After the intervention, the athlete total quantity of heat to reduce every day. A day after the intervention, the athlete protein not significant sex(P> 0.05), and fat intake, carbohydrate intake increases, both P<0.05, there is a clear significant. Calcium intake has significantly increased after intervention. After the intervention, the athletes into food choices were not significantly change.Conclusion:1. Result shows that parents of 8-12 years old swimmers with autism agree that reasonable food and nutrition is conducive to improve training performance of these swimmers. However, these parents have insufficient knowledge in nutrition. After intervention, some of the improper eating behavior are improved.2. Investigation of food intake discovered that the athletes consume a higher intake then the recommended daily intake. Besides, they have in proportionate calorie intake in different meals and imbalance of nutrients.3. After intervention, the daily calorie intake of these swimmers decreases sufficiently. The proportion of calorie intake in different meals is more balanced. However, it is still higher than the recommended value. This indicates long term improvement is needed to correct food and nutrition of athletes.4. Although autism patients are mostly stubborn and stereotypical and thus, display certain levels of picky eating, intervention can alleviate problematic areas in their food and nutrition to improve training performance of these athletes.