Introduction:
Adolescent athletes need a gender-specific diet for health, development, and performance. Sports nutrition advice is scarce in rural Nigeria, and gender norms influence eating habits. WhatsApp is a cost-effective and scalable platform for individualized nutrition coaching due to smartphone penetration. WhatsApp-based nutrition coaching improved gender-specific eating habits and performance indicators in rural Nigerian adolescent athletes.
Methods:
A quasi-experimental pre–post study was conducted on 80 adolescent athletes (40 males, 40 girls; ages 14–19) from four rural secondary schools in Oyo State. Measuring instruments included nutrition knowledge (15-item WhatsApp quiz), dietary diversity (3-day food picture diaries assessed using the FAO dietary diversity tool), anthropometry (BMI for age), and performance measurements (20m shuttle run, 100m sprint, handgrip strength). Participants received daily instructions and engaging feedback over six weeks of gender-specific WhatsApp coaching. All baseline metrics were repeated post-intervention. Paired t-tests and ANCOVA were used for analysis, with significance set at p < 0.05.
Results:
Nutrition knowledge significantly increased from 6.8 ± 2.1 to 10.9 ± 2.4 (p < 0.001). Females showed greater improvement in diet diversity scores (+1.9 vs. +1.4; p = 0.03), increasing from 4.2 ± 1.1 to 5.8 ± 1.3 (p < 0.001). Performance outcomes improved: VO₂ max increased by 2.3 ml/kg/min (p = 0.002), sprint times decreased by 0.6 seconds (p = 0.01), and handgrip strength increased by 3.1 kg (p = 0.004). Gender analysis showed that females improved in their eating habits while males improved in their sprint performance. The message response rate was 92.5%.
Conclusion:
WhatsApp-based nutrition coaching enhanced rural Nigerian adolescents' gender-specific diets and physical performance. The results demonstrate the feasibility, scalability, and importance of adding simple, culturally appropriate digital interventions into African school sports and nutrition programmes.
