More fat? More carbs? What kind? How much? When?

Questions about what constitutes an ideal and practical diet for competitive athletes consume and confuse many athletes, as well as their coaches and families. But a new, comprehensive review about the science of sports nutrition published recently in Science provides a lucid overview of what currently is known — and not known — about how athletes should eat.

To find out more about these and other topics, I spoke with Louise Burke, a sports dietitian and professor at Australian Catholic University who has worked with many elite Australian sports teams. She wrote the new review with her husband John Hawley, the director of the Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research at Australian Catholic University. What follows are edited and summarized excerpts from our conversation.

Q. In your review, you write that “carbohydrates are the predominant and critical substrate for working muscles” and that “the availability of carbohydrates, rather than fat, wins gold medals.” So athletes should be eating and drinking carbs?

A. Broadly speaking, if you had to stretch a big umbrella over the whole sports world and say, what dietary approach will bring the most performance benefits to the most types of athletes, then, yes, a high-carb diet would usually be the answer.