title: An analysis of the nutrition support process in rugby union athletes in New Zealand: Practical considerations and applications within rugby developmental environments

authors: Roberts, Charlie

subjects: Rugby union

abstract: Nutrition has long been an important consideration for optimal sporting performance and recovery, athlete well-being and the modulation of injury risk. Ensuring that athletes follow dietary patterns that are nutrient-dense and facilitate the meeting of energy and macronutrient requirements is a crucial part of the sports nutrition practitioners’ role. Furthermore, the practitioner should facilitate athletes understanding of meal timing and its potential benefit towards optimising performance and recovery. The accurate collection and interpretation of dietary intake data and provision of appropriate support towards athletes meeting overall nutrient requirements, promoting adherence to macro and micronutrient- dense dietary patterns and manipulation of meal timing may thus facilitate optimal performance and recovery.

The emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in December 2019 and subsequent global spread saw the World Health Organisation declare a pandemic. As a result, governments and local authorities implemented a variety of restrictions to minimise the spread of the virus. In March 2020, New Zealand enforced strict lockdown restrictions that saw the forced closure of shops, restaurants, gyms and training facilities alongside mask requirements, social distancing, and the encouragement of more intensive hygiene procedures. As such, the purpose of Chapter 3 was to report the perceived influence of such restrictions on nutrition and training habits in rugby players. Changes in living situations were reported in response to lockdown restrictions, and diet quality may have improved, with limited respondents reporting reduced fruit and vegetable intake and increased packaged and convenience food intake. Furthermore, participants reported a reduction in motivation to exercise and train during lockdown, with follow-up survey responses indicating positive changes once restrictions were lifted. A variety of sources of nutrition information aside from dieticians or nutritionists were reported by participants including coaching staff, team-mates, family, social media, and the internet. Collectively, the data indicate that unexpected events such as the emergence and global spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus can influence athletes’ dietary choices and nutrition practitioner support may be valuable for ensuring athletes make appropriate dietary choices during times of reduced training volume to maintain lean mass, adaptations, health and mitigate injury risk upon the return to play.

The use of technology to assist and facilitate the monitoring and analysis of dietary intake has gained popularity in both research and practice due to less participant burden and the potential for more accurate information. Despite this, the practical validity of such tools is unknown. The findings of Chapter 4 indicate that the remote food photography method application utilised in this thesis demonstrates ecological validity on a group level in athletic individuals. Despite this, significant individual variability is present, with inter-individual discrepancy in the % difference in calculated energy and macronutrient values. As such, the findings of this data suggest the remote food photography method may be beneficial for providing group level recommendations; however, individual intakes must be interpreted with caution.

In Chapter 5, the daily distribution patterns of professional and semi-professional rugby players were investigated. Rugby players may benefit from consideration of protein distribution, with mechanistic research suggesting an even spread of 0.4g‧kg‧d across 4 – 6 meals may result in a more optimal anabolic response; as such, adherence to such a pattern may optimise recovery, physiological adaptations, and performance. The data in Chapter 5 are in alignment with patterns presented in other athletic disciplines, whereby sub-optimal consumption is reported at snacks and only two eating occasions meeting the proposed 0.4g‧kg threshold for eliciting an optimal anabolic response.
 
The manipulation of daily protein distribution was to be applied as an intervention in response to the findings in Chapter 5 to investigate the influence of optimised patterns on body composition, performance variables and well-being; however, it was determined following initial monitoring of the participants’ dietary intake that requirements based on best- practice literature and recommendations were not being met. As such, the intervention reported in Chapter 6 was adapted to investigate how the implementation of full-time nutrition practitioner support delivered over a four-week period in an environment where prior support was minimal influenced total and per-meal nutrient intake, nutrition knowledge, body composition and well-being in provincial academy rugby players. Significant increases following intervention delivery were observed for total energy and protein intake. Additionally, consumption of protein at the breakfast, post-gym and snack eating occasions was greater. Carbohydrate intake pre-gym significantly increased in response to the intervention whilst consumption at PM snack and dinner was reduced.

The development and execution of the research contained in this thesis demonstrates the unpredictable and volatile nature of working in performance environments. Furthermore, major challenges during the nutrition support process, as would be delivered by sports nutrition practitioners, may influence the quality-of-service provision. As summarized in Chapter 7, the research in this thesis provides novel insight into the influence of full-time nutrition support when delivered by practitioners over a four-week period; as such, future research should further bridge the gap between research and practice by analysing the impact of nutrition support over prolonged periods. Additionally, incorporating qualitative data collection will allow for the better understanding of athletes’ perceptions of current and desired nutrition support, how the inclusion of nutrition support benefits their perceptions of performance and well-being, and how well- received the inclusion of nutrition support would be. Additionally, future research should aim to build upon the themes introduced in this thesis and explore how the manipulation of dietary protein intake influences athlete-specific performance and adaptation, allowing for the creation of sport-specific, evidence-informed recommendations.

text: An analysis of the nutrition support process in rugby union athletes in New Zealand: Practical considerations and applications within rugby developmental environments Nutrition has long been an important consideration for optimal sporting performance and recovery, athlete well-being and the modulation of injury risk. Ensuring that athletes follow dietary patterns that are nutrient-dense and facilitate the meeting of energy and macronutrient requirements is a crucial part of the sports nutrition practitioners’ role. Furthermore, the practitioner should facilitate athletes understanding of meal timing and its potential benefit towards optimising performance and recovery. The accurate collection and interpretation of dietary intake data and provision of appropriate support towards athletes meeting overall nutrient requirements, promoting adherence to macro and micronutrient- dense dietary patterns and manipulation of meal timing may thus facilitate optimal performance and recovery.

The emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in December 2019 and subsequent global spread saw the World Health Organisation declare a pandemic. As a result, governments and local authorities implemented a variety of restrictions to minimise the spread of the virus. In March 2020, New Zealand enforced strict lockdown restrictions that saw the forced closure of shops, restaurants, gyms and training facilities alongside mask requirements, social distancing, and the encouragement of more intensive hygiene procedures. As such, the purpose of Chapter 3 was to report the perceived influence of such restrictions on nutrition and training habits in rugby players. Changes in living situations were reported in response to lockdown restrictions, and diet quality may have improved, with limited respondents reporting reduced fruit and vegetable intake and increased packaged and convenience food intake. Furthermore, participants reported a reduction in motivation to exercise and train during lockdown, with follow-up survey responses indicating positive changes once restrictions were lifted. A variety of sources of nutrition information aside from dieticians or nutritionists were reported by participants including coaching staff, team-mates, family, social media, and the internet. Collectively, the data indicate that unexpected events such as the emergence and global spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus can influence athletes’ dietary choices and nutrition practitioner support may be valuable for ensuring athletes make appropriate dietary choices during times of reduced training volume to maintain lean mass, adaptations, health and mitigate injury risk upon the return to play.

The use of technology to assist and facilitate the monitoring and analysis of dietary intake has gained popularity in both research and practice due to less participant burden and the potential for more accurate information. Despite this, the practical validity of such tools is unknown. The findings of Chapter 4 indicate that the remote food photography method application utilised in this thesis demonstrates ecological validity on a group level in athletic individuals. Despite this, significant individual variability is present, with inter-individual discrepancy in the % difference in calculated energy and macronutrient values. As such, the findings of this data suggest the remote food photography method may be beneficial for providing group level recommendations; however, individual intakes must be interpreted with caution.

In Chapter 5, the daily distribution patterns of professional and semi-professional rugby players were investigated. Rugby players may benefit from consideration of protein distribution, with mechanistic research suggesting an even spread of 0.4g‧kg‧d across 4 – 6 meals may result in a more optimal anabolic response; as such, adherence to such a pattern may optimise recovery, physiological adaptations, and performance. The data in Chapter 5 are in alignment with patterns presented in other athletic disciplines, whereby sub-optimal consumption is reported at snacks and only two eating occasions meeting the proposed 0.4g‧kg threshold for eliciting an optimal anabolic response.
 
The manipulation of daily protein distribution was to be applied as an intervention in response to the findings in Chapter 5 to investigate the influence of optimised patterns on body composition, performance variables and well-being; however, it was determined following initial monitoring of the participants’ dietary intake that requirements based on best- practice literature and recommendations were not being met. As such, the intervention reported in Chapter 6 was adapted to investigate how the implementation of full-time nutrition practitioner support delivered over a four-week period in an environment where prior support was minimal influenced total and per-meal nutrient intake, nutrition knowledge, body composition and well-being in provincial academy rugby players. Significant increases following intervention delivery were observed for total energy and protein intake. Additionally, consumption of protein at the breakfast, post-gym and snack eating occasions was greater. Carbohydrate intake pre-gym significantly increased in response to the intervention whilst consumption at PM snack and dinner was reduced.

The development and execution of the research contained in this thesis demonstrates the unpredictable and volatile nature of working in performance environments. Furthermore, major challenges during the nutrition support process, as would be delivered by sports nutrition practitioners, may influence the quality-of-service provision. As summarized in Chapter 7, the research in this thesis provides novel insight into the influence of full-time nutrition support when delivered by practitioners over a four-week period; as such, future research should further bridge the gap between research and practice by analysing the impact of nutrition support over prolonged periods. Additionally, incorporating qualitative data collection will allow for the better understanding of athletes’ perceptions of current and desired nutrition support, how the inclusion of nutrition support benefits their perceptions of performance and well-being, and how well- received the inclusion of nutrition support would be. Additionally, future research should aim to build upon the themes introduced in this thesis and explore how the manipulation of dietary protein intake influences athlete-specific performance and adaptation, allowing for the creation of sport-specific, evidence-informed recommendations.

year: 2022

title: Social knowledge of food: How and why people talk about foods

authors: Miyazaki, Yoshihiko

subjects: social contingency

abstract: Social knowledge about food was investigated from a social contingency perspective (Guerin, 1994, 1998, 2004), a functional linguistic approach that considers language use having functions both to establish 'facts' in order to control listeners, and to maintain social relationships with words.
	In Study 1, whether people shared knowledge about food or not was examined.  One hundred and fourteen New Zealand and 23 Japanese participants were asked to answer free format questionnaires asking the reasons they and others eat or do not eat particular food items.  Those answers were categorised into 8 categories and 30 sub-categories of the knowledge about foods by qualitative content analysis.  The results of a cluster analysis of those categories showed that participants used the categories homogeneously although there were some differences between New Zealand and Japanese participants, and that the participants selectively used different types of knowledge according to food items especially when explaining why people do or do not eat some foods.
	In Study 2, rhetorical features about foods were investigated: (1) numerical quantification rhetoric; (2) narrative use rhetoric; and (3) enumeration rhetoric.  Factual statements from a corpus of 118 New Zealand TV commercials and 249 Japanese TV commercials were coded by the categories generated in Study 1.  The results showed that the categories of factual statements were selectively used on TV commercials depending on the food types, and related closely to the results of Study 1.  The rhetorical strategies appeared in commercials according to the categories of factual statements.  When more than one factual statement was presented in a commercial, the relations of the factual statements were usually of a conjunctive form such as quotfact A however fact Bquot or quotfact A moreover fact Bquot, or else the factual statements were presented independently rather than the one statement logically warranting the other.  These results suggest that those rhetoric uses and the arrangements of the factual statements were selectively used according to the effectiveness against counter arguments using shared knowledge.
	Study 3 and Study 4 analysed the functions of shared knowledge about food for maintaining social relationships through investigating the cases in which knowledge about foods presented as the form of 'collaborative talk', which occurs when one speaker completes the preceding saying by another speaker.
	In Study 3, the collaborative talk as sentence completions of knowledge about food was qualitatively analysed from conversations of 30 to 45 minutes produced by four groups consisting of four or five Japanese participants who were friends.  From a social contingency view, the analysis focused on the following conversational properties: (1) who the listener was; (2) the degree of sharing of the information between the speakers; (3) the degree of sharing of the information between the 2nd speaker and the listener; and (4) the disagreement between the 2nd speaker and the listener.
The results of Study 3 suggested some possible functions of sentence completions of knowledge about food: (1) the function when the first speaker is the listener may be enhancement of the relationship between the first and the second speakers through showing the second speaker's attention and understanding to the first speaker's utterance, because those sentence completions were often followed by the affirmation or negation by the first speaker; (2) when a third person is the listener, and the first and the second speaker refuted the third person using sentence completion, the function seems to be just establishing 'facts'; and (3) in the cases of 'assisted explaining' (Lerner  Takagi, 1999) , the function may be not only establishing 'facts' but also enhancement the relationship between the listener and the speakers, because the constructed 'facts' may work as a kind of conversational 'gift'.
	In Study 4, five Japanese groups consisting of four participants who were friends were asked to talk about four topics about foods that all participants either agreed or disagreed ('All agree' condition) and four food topics for which there was disagreement about it between participants ('Some agree' condition).  When the listeners could not be identified, and the second speakers did not used the utterance-final element such as 'yo ne' that is regarded as having a function of showing agreement between the speakers, the participants used sentence completions more frequently in 'All agree' conditions.  The results suggested that the function of this type of sentence completion is not merely establishing 'facts' but also enhancing the relationship between the speakers through showing agreement about the relevant things to the topic.
	In conclusion, the results of the present studies suggest some possible social contingencies involved both when people get knowledge about food and when they use it.

text: Social knowledge of food: How and why people talk about foods Social knowledge about food was investigated from a social contingency perspective (Guerin, 1994, 1998, 2004), a functional linguistic approach that considers language use having functions both to establish 'facts' in order to control listeners, and to maintain social relationships with words.
	In Study 1, whether people shared knowledge about food or not was examined.  One hundred and fourteen New Zealand and 23 Japanese participants were asked to answer free format questionnaires asking the reasons they and others eat or do not eat particular food items.  Those answers were categorised into 8 categories and 30 sub-categories of the knowledge about foods by qualitative content analysis.  The results of a cluster analysis of those categories showed that participants used the categories homogeneously although there were some differences between New Zealand and Japanese participants, and that the participants selectively used different types of knowledge according to food items especially when explaining why people do or do not eat some foods.
	In Study 2, rhetorical features about foods were investigated: (1) numerical quantification rhetoric; (2) narrative use rhetoric; and (3) enumeration rhetoric.  Factual statements from a corpus of 118 New Zealand TV commercials and 249 Japanese TV commercials were coded by the categories generated in Study 1.  The results showed that the categories of factual statements were selectively used on TV commercials depending on the food types, and related closely to the results of Study 1.  The rhetorical strategies appeared in commercials according to the categories of factual statements.  When more than one factual statement was presented in a commercial, the relations of the factual statements were usually of a conjunctive form such as quotfact A however fact Bquot or quotfact A moreover fact Bquot, or else the factual statements were presented independently rather than the one statement logically warranting the other.  These results suggest that those rhetoric uses and the arrangements of the factual statements were selectively used according to the effectiveness against counter arguments using shared knowledge.
	Study 3 and Study 4 analysed the functions of shared knowledge about food for maintaining social relationships through investigating the cases in which knowledge about foods presented as the form of 'collaborative talk', which occurs when one speaker completes the preceding saying by another speaker.
	In Study 3, the collaborative talk as sentence completions of knowledge about food was qualitatively analysed from conversations of 30 to 45 minutes produced by four groups consisting of four or five Japanese participants who were friends.  From a social contingency view, the analysis focused on the following conversational properties: (1) who the listener was; (2) the degree of sharing of the information between the speakers; (3) the degree of sharing of the information between the 2nd speaker and the listener; and (4) the disagreement between the 2nd speaker and the listener.
The results of Study 3 suggested some possible functions of sentence completions of knowledge about food: (1) the function when the first speaker is the listener may be enhancement of the relationship between the first and the second speakers through showing the second speaker's attention and understanding to the first speaker's utterance, because those sentence completions were often followed by the affirmation or negation by the first speaker; (2) when a third person is the listener, and the first and the second speaker refuted the third person using sentence completion, the function seems to be just establishing 'facts'; and (3) in the cases of 'assisted explaining' (Lerner  Takagi, 1999) , the function may be not only establishing 'facts' but also enhancement the relationship between the listener and the speakers, because the constructed 'facts' may work as a kind of conversational 'gift'.
	In Study 4, five Japanese groups consisting of four participants who were friends were asked to talk about four topics about foods that all participants either agreed or disagreed ('All agree' condition) and four food topics for which there was disagreement about it between participants ('Some agree' condition).  When the listeners could not be identified, and the second speakers did not used the utterance-final element such as 'yo ne' that is regarded as having a function of showing agreement between the speakers, the participants used sentence completions more frequently in 'All agree' conditions.  The results suggested that the function of this type of sentence completion is not merely establishing 'facts' but also enhancing the relationship between the speakers through showing agreement about the relevant things to the topic.
	In conclusion, the results of the present studies suggest some possible social contingencies involved both when people get knowledge about food and when they use it.

year: 2008

title: Strawmen and the decolonisation of the academy

authors: Tauri, Juan Marcellus

subjects: Social justice

abstract: For this piece I take as my point of departure Biko Agozino’s response to a series of questions posed by a member of the audience, to a panel he was a member of during this time in New Zealand. The panel in question was part of the launch of a new journal, Decolonisation of Criminology and Justice, at AUT University, Auckland in June 2018. Biko was invited to give a speech at the launch of the journal, and participate in a panel discussion on the broad theme of ‘decolonising criminology and criminal justice’.

text: Strawmen and the decolonisation of the academy For this piece I take as my point of departure Biko Agozino’s response to a series of questions posed by a member of the audience, to a panel he was a member of during this time in New Zealand. The panel in question was part of the launch of a new journal, Decolonisation of Criminology and Justice, at AUT University, Auckland in June 2018. Biko was invited to give a speech at the launch of the journal, and participate in a panel discussion on the broad theme of ‘decolonising criminology and criminal justice’.

year: 2019-07-10