Nutritionist Daniel on RTÉ’s Ear to the Ground
SLIGO native Daniel Davey was featured in a segment on last week’s edition of Ear to the Ground on RTÉ One.
The programme looked into his balance between being a sports nutritionist for the Dublin Senior Gaelic footballers and working on the family farm in Chaffpool – and how this background influenced his future in enhancing the performance of inter-county football’s dominant force.
“I only wanted to play football and farm from a very young age. My dream was to work with local agricultural contractors,” he said on the programme. “I was involved in high performance sport at UCD.
“I had farming in the background as a genuine interest and then I was drawn to performance nutrition and I decided that was a direction I wanted to go.” Daniel was keen to move away from a reliance on supplements towards what he describes as getting back to basics of natural nutrition.
“You see a lot of sports gels and drinks. I wanted to move away from that and create a culture around good food by preparing natural ingredients in tasty recipes. Food is recognised as fuel for performance before and after exercise and you also have to think of it as a ritual.”
“It is about behaviour and habits,” he continued.
“It’s not what I can quickly get on the way to a match or training, it’s creating something with natural ingredients that will provide your body with nourisment for each session. Doing basic things right takes discipline and consistency and that gets you to where you want to go.”