Question

In week 6 you were provided with a list of various tools to assess dietary intake. In your opinion, are dietary intake records a valid method to collect data? Discuss the strengths, weakness, and limitations of the various assessment tools. Which tool is the most reliable and why?

USDA Healthy Eating Index

Diet History Questionnaire

Dietary Assessment Calibration/Validation Register

The science of sustaining health behavior change: the health maintenance consortium

Measures Registry (Childhood Obesity Research)(link is external)

National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research.

Automated Self-administered 24-Hour Dietary Recall (ASA24)

Short Dietary Assessment Instruments

Answer 1

1 USDA healthy eating index assess how a particular food set aligns with the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.The higher the score on the Healthy eating index ,the better the diet conformed to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.it reflects the complexity of dietary patterns.it could provide the basis for development of a variety of additional tools,as it is useful in monitoring trends in US consumption patterns over time.

Some of the limitations were mainly technical such as determination of portion sizes and estimation of food group serving requirements by age and gender.

2 DHQ is a food frequency questionaire developed by the staff at the Risk Factor Monitoring and Methods branch

DHQ is the best among the nutrient estimates ,as two studies conducted for assessing its validity turned out positive.

Strengths are they are useful for estimating longterm usual intakes of food and is particularly useful in large population studies.Coding is generally less intensive.

Weaknesses-it is not suitable for cross-cultural or cross -country comparisons ,unless comparable food lists included and requires good participant memory.

3 DACV is a register which contains studies and publications.

Weakness -studies related to food composition and household composition are excluded.

Limitations -If a particular study is included in the Dietary Assessment Calibration it does not mean that NCI is approved.

4 Health Maintenance Consortium is still in its infancy stage .The main goal is to provide direction to the behavioural health field by bringing together dispartate theories of processes of change,relapde prevention and other approaches to understand the long-term maintenance of behavioural change and effectiv sustainable strategies for achieving health promotion and disease prevention goals.

7 ASA24 Is a short term method where details of foods and drinks consumed over previous 24 hours recalled.

Strengths-provides detailed data leading to good estimates of short -term total dietary intake if it is complemented well and if nutritional supplement use assessed.it also helps in collection of extra information.

Weakness -it is not suitable for measuring distant past meal and is unsuitable for participants with memory issues.it is unable to account for day to day variation .it is quite expensive if face to face interaction is required.

Dietary history Questionaire is the best tool as it it has surpassed all the studies with positive results.