Pablo presented the results of his work at the International Congress of Physical Education, held in Foz de Iguaçu at the beginning of the year. For students, the large number of products on the market promise dietary supplementation with the main purpose of improving performance in sporting activities and improving the citizen's quality of life. But this is not always true.
“The use of some dietary supplements can even influence sports performance. However, the side effects of some of these substances are not fully known, and more accurate research is recommended”, warns the student. What can be seen, according to Pablo's research, is that there is complete misinformation, both from those who administer the product and those who consume it. The problem also reaches universities and, sometimes, not even professors and doctors are satisfactorily able to recommend the most appropriate and effective product for the user.
In the case of Unicamp, FEF itself has a nutrition discipline that, “if it does not completely eliminate any mistakes, at least minimizes them”, as he explains. The best person for this is a nutritionist, a professional qualified in the scientific use of the individual's diet, whether he is an athlete or not.
Pablo's investigations were carried out with members of 29 gyms in Campinas, determined by draw based on a list provided by the Regional Council of Physical Education of Campinas (CREF). Guided by professor Maria da Consolação Gomes Tavares, from FEF, the researcher concluded that 292 athletes, of the 621 research volunteers, declared having ingested dietary supplements in the year preceding the survey, the biggest consumers of which are men, with 68,1%, against 31,8% of women. What's more: the most frequent consumption age group was 23 to 28 years old.
Consciousness – Pablo found that 74,3% of consumers were single, and that 65,1% had completed or were still studying higher education. This level of education, however, was not enough for consumers to look for more reliable information about supplements, since only 26,7% of them had doctors and nutritionists as sources of information. “It should be noted that this rate (26,7%), considered low, is caused by the ease of finding the product on the market”, believes the researcher.
But the vast majority, that is, 94,2% of these consumers, declared themselves to be regular bodybuilders. The student also noted that 7,5% of consumers reported having used anabolic steroids, a number that could be considered too high. However, the research shows that the vast majority, that is, 90,4% of consumers, used dietary supplements without any prior consultation with a doctor or nutritionist.
“We believe that the lack of consultation with a doctor or nutritionist could contribute to the expectation of inconsistent results from these supplements. It turns out that many consumers expected to obtain at least satisfactory results from the supplements they consumed, which neither the scientific literature nor even the advertising on the subject says is possible,” he explains. For example: consuming vitamin C to gain muscle mass. “I have never seen any research on this matter or even propaganda stating this”, says the researcher.
However, Pablo also reveals that more than 90% of the consumers investigated declared that they had observed a considerable improvement in terms of performance after they started taking dietary supplements. “Now, how to know whether or not such results are true is difficult to conclude.” Interestingly, there are gyms in Campinas that have food producer shelves, “as a means of drawing the attention of patrons, in order to encourage them to buy the product, which leads us to believe, as a result, that the number of consumers increases considerably. It is possible that gym owners and teachers also end up recommending supplements, since, as I was able to see, 18,5% of the volunteers responded that they had knowledge of dietary supplements through their teachers”, says Pablo, whose work was carried out with funding from the Institutional Scientific Initiation Scholarship Project (Pibic), CNPq/SAE.
O student Pablo Christiano Lollo, in the 5th year of the Faculty of Physical Education (FEF), spent a year and a half researching the consumption of dietary supplements by gym goers in Campinas. The objective of his studies was to identify and compose the profile of these individuals who, according to the researcher's observations, most of the time consume products of dubious effectiveness. 
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