Athlete Food Skills Interventions Are Not Conceptually Aligned with Culinary Nutrition: A Scoping Review of the Missing Ingredient in Sports Nutrition.

BACKGROUND: Nutrition underpins athletic health, performance, and recovery. However, many athletes do not achieve optimal dietary practices. Practical barriers, including limited time, financial constraints, and low confidence in food preparation, may limit the translation of nutrition knowledge into consistent dietary behaviors. Culinary nutrition (CN) integrates nutrition science with hands-on food skills and has emerged as a strategy to address translational gaps, yet its application in sports nutrition remains underexplored. OBJECTIVES: This scoping review aims to 1) characterize the design and hands-on activities of food skills interventions for athletes and 2) compare how these interventions align with the established definition of CN. METHODS: Guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute Manual for Evidence Synthesis and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines, a systematic search of SportDiscus, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PubMed, and Scopus was conducted in January 2026. Studies were included if they involved athletes and incorporated a hands-on food skill component. Two independent reviewers screened studies and extracted data using a standardized template. Researchers then synthesized the data to characterize intervention design and evaluate alignment with the constructs used to define CN. RESULTS: Ten studies met the inclusion criteria. Although food skills interventions varied by population, setting, duration, and delivery, all combined hands-on activities with didactic nutrition education. Studies represented a geographically diverse sample spanning 7 countries: Brazil, India, the United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and Germany. Participants included athletes competing across a range of levels, from secondary school and community sport to university and regional-level competition. Mean participant ages ranged from 11.9 to 22 y, and studies included male, female, and mixed-sex samples. Interventions targeted outcomes including nutrition knowledge, dietary behaviors, and psychosocial determinants (e.g., self-efficacy and readiness to change). Evaluation approaches were inconsistent. No studies directly measured food skills, and none fully aligned with core CN constructs. CONCLUSIONS: Greater conceptual clarity, stronger theoretical integration, establishment of standardization and best practices, and more interventional research exploring the impact of CN on individuals' health, well-being, and performance are needed to advance CN in sports contexts. This study was registered at Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/4cske/overview).