PROTEIN SUPPLEMENT USE AMONG NETSURFERS VISITING HEALTH AND FITNESS COMMUNITY: FINDINGS FROM AN INTERNET-BASED SURVEY

Abstract

Introduction It is largely known that protein supplement (PS) use is a widespread and accepted practice by athletes and people who attend commercial gyms (Bianco et al., 2011). However, only few studies have been carried out in order to investigate supplement use and lifestyle in netsurfers of health and fitness community. For this reason the purpose of this preliminary study was to investigate the use of PS, age and lifestyle of people who visited a specific Italian sporting website: www.fitnessa360.com. Methods 273 subjects netsurfing in the www.fitnessa360.com completed the 6-item online-questionnaire about age, gender, daily cigarette consumption, protein supplement use, information source about use of PS and sitting time per day. All data were analyzed by a preliminary descriptive statistical analysis. Results The survey showed that subjects, of which 170 males and 103 females, declared an age of 15-20 years (11%), 21-30 years (8%), 31-40 years (72%), 41-50 years (4%), 51-60 years (3%), 61-70 years (0%), 71-80 years (0%), 81-90 years (2%). When examining the daily cigarette consumption, we found that the majority of the subjects claimed not to smoke (66.0%) and to take SP (62%). Moreover, 60% of participants did not specify the information source about use of SP. Only 37% of sample declared to use SP. Moreover, examined data showed that 15%, 40%, 30%, 12% and 2% of subjects spent sitting time per day 1-3 h, 3-5 h, 5-8, 8-10, >10 h respectively. Discussion This preliminary analysis showed that netsurfers of the used health and fitness Italian community mainly appear to be office workers with healthy lifestyle. Indeed in agreement with Nagaya et al. (2007), that showed a coexistence between smoking and sedentary lifestyle, we found that the majority of participants (66%) did not to smoke. Moreover, protein supplementation does not appear to interest the netsurfers of the used sporting website heavily. An online survey can be a low-cost, efficient, and confidential modality to investigate the netsurfers’ lifestyle of sporting websites. However only by a dissemination strategy of this questionnaire from other Italian sporting websites we could investigate the lifestyle of their netsurfers. References: Bianco A, Mammina C, Paoli A, Bellafiore M, Battaglia G, Caramazza G, Palma A, Jemni M. (2011). J Int Soc Sports Nutr, 8(1), 25. Nagaya T, Yoshida H, Takahashi H, Kawai M. (2007). Nicotine Tob Res, 9(10), 1027-32