Nutritional intelligence applied to sports performance at Lezama

The challenge

The benefits of personalised nutrition in sport are widely recognised, and an increasing number of sports organisations are seeking ways to integrate it into athlete development. Athletic Club had long embraced nutrition as a key tool to maximise team performance, but aimed to go one step further by tailoring menus as precisely as possible to the specific metabolic characteristics of each player.

The solution

A gastronomic laboratory that incorporates the latest advances in health and wellbeing and applies them to professional sports performance, with AZTI playing a key role through analyses supported by artificial intelligence and Big Data, as well as advanced biotechnologies and omics sciences (specifically membrane lipidomics and microbiota analysis).

The results

• Through the Smart Nutrition Lab project, a nutritional recommendation algorithm was developed that can adjust players’ daily menus in real time at the Athletic Club’s Lezama training facility. The system integrates multiple variables collected continuously in the club’s day-to-day activity, such as training profile, playing position, previous intake, and daily food choices. This enables the delivery of personalised recommendations aimed at optimising each player’s nutrition.
• This approach demonstrates the potential of integrating physiological, nutritional, and behavioural data into a dynamic decision-support system within the Lezama dining environment, laying the groundwork for progress towards fully digitalised personalised sports nutrition.