PORT ADELAIDE players aren’t sacrificing their nutritional needs despite the vastly different cuisine in China, thanks to meticulous planning from the club’s nutrition staff.

Club nutritionist Emily Hartley discussed the menu a few months ago with chefs at the team hotel to ensure the food served would be safe, delicious and nutritious for when the players arrived earlier this week.

She said the hotel buffet offered a variety of salads, meats and vegetables, but among the most popular dishes were the traditional dumplings.

“We’ve got a variety of different things so there is something for everyone,” Ms Hartley said.

“We’ve got a bit of a salad bar, rolls, meats, plus traditional foods like dumplings.

“We’re really lucky because there’s such a wide variety of foods, so it means the players are getting the best nutrition possible, they’re coming into trainings fuelled and it means they’ll be in the best shape possible for the game on Saturday.”

Port Adelaide learnt from last year’s inaugural game in China in terms of planning and preparation for all facets of the 2018 instalment.

Among the planning was to ensure much of the produce at the hotel was imported from Australia.

Despite all the organisation, Ms Hartley admits some troubleshooting has been required since the team’s arrival on Tuesday.

“It is a little bit more difficult than a standard away game,” she said.

“We’re really lucky that we have worked closely with the chefs so we organised a menu a couple of months before we arrived which means they had enough time to import a lot of the produce from Australia, particularly the meats.”

“There’s just a higher risk for the meats in China so we are lucky we were able to get them from Australia to limit that risk.”

The club brought some of its own food with it among 600 kilograms of freight, but that was mostly limited to muesli bars and protein supplements.

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