A well balanced diet is extremely important not only for professional sports players but for everybody. A healthy diet helps you to perform better both on and off the field. It is important that everyone has a balanced diet as it could help you live longer, give you more energy to do the things you enjoy and keep away illness.

A healthy balanced diet contains a variety of types of food, including lots of fruit, vegetables and starchy foods such as wholemeal bread and wholegrain cereals; some protein rich foods such as meat, fish eggs and lentils; and some dairy foods. It is also important to try and avoid foods high in fat, sugar and salt such as burgers and fizzy drinks.

Food Categories

Food comes into one of the following categories:

1) Starchy foods including Carbohydrates such as Bread, Cereals and Potatoes
2) Fruit and Vegetables
3) Protein in the form of Meat, Fish ,Eggs and Beans
4) Milk and Dairy products
5) Fats and Sugars

Useful Tips

Here are some useful tips for a healthy diet. Follow these basic lessons and you will not go far wrong.

1) Base Meals on starchy foods

These are foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, chapattis, pasta, noodles, oats, crackers and cereal. Have large amounts at each meal- if you are hungry have them for snacks too.

2) Try to have 5 servings of vegetables or fruit each day

Choose from fresh, frozen and canned.  Don’t forget pure juices and dried fruit for a change. Could you add some vegetable or fruit to each meal or have fruit as a quick snack?

3) Remember to include milk and dairy foods

Aim for 2 to 3 servings each day. Switch to low fat types to cut the fat not the calcium. Try to have milk and yoghurts instead of cream and ice-cream. A serving is 1/3 pint milk, 1 pot of yoghurt and a small matchbox size piece of cheese. Cravendale Milk is especially delicious and is a great source of calcium. And Cravendale isn’t just any milk, it’s filtered to make it purer Calcium is a mineral that strengthens your bones and teeth, and ensures everything runs smoothly with your muscles and nerves. It's especially important for growth.

Calcium can continue to add to the strength of your bones until you reach the age of 30 to 35, it is especially important as you grow older as it helps your bones to grow bigger and stronger. Foods that contain calcium include milk, cheese and yoghurt. Butter, margarine, cream and ice-cream also contain calcium but these contain lots of fat and sugar too and too much of theses foods is bad for you.

4) Have small amounts of meat or fish, or other types of protein such as beans, peas lentils or eggs.

Choose ones lower in fat- including chicken, turkey, beef, pork or lams, fish, eggs, or beans. Try to have fish twice a week - tuna, sardines, mackerel and other oily varieties are very good. If you mash them up and eat the bones then you will get extra calcium!

5) Limit the foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt

When you use fats such as margarine, butter, spreads and cooking oils have as little as possible. Try not to have high fat foods every day - this includes fried and pastry foods and snacks such as chocolate, biscuits and crisps. If you are going to have a snack, go for a piece of fruit. Tip - look for sugar-free drinks, don’t add sugar to tea and coffee and don’t add sugar to cereals or salt to meals.

6) Always eat Breakfast

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If you don’t have breakfast then you won’t have enough energy for the day and you will feel tired and lose concentration easily. All the players eat breakfast before training because they would be unable to train without it. Toast, cereals, porridge, fruit, yoghurt, milk, is all excellent foods to eat at breakfast. When choosing cereals pick the ones that are low in sugar.

7) Drink lots of fluids

Another part of a healthy diet is making sure that you are drinking enough throughout a day. You should be aiming to drink at least 5 glasses of water a day. This needs to be increased if you are exercising at all such as P.E lessons or playing at break at school. It also needs to be increased if the weather is hot. Good choices are water, fruit juice, milk and reduced sugar squash.
Bad choices are fizzy drinks, tea and coffee.

All the players have a drink with every meal and carry a drinks bottle with them all the time to make sure that they drink as much as they need. Don’t wait until you are thirsty to have a drink!

A typical diet of a Leeds Rhinos player

The Leeds Rhinos players’ diet is not too different from a normal healthy diet. It is important that they follow the same rules as everyone else and eat a healthy and balanced diet; eating food from each of the food groups and limiting the amount of fat, salt and sugars. The main difference is that they need to eat more food and more often than normal people because they need the extra energy from the food for training, playing and recovering.