Introduction Selection of Dietary assessment.

  Introduction Selection of Dietary assessment method under special circumstances

The criteria for selection of a dietary assessment method relies heavily upon criteria factor such as objective of the study, nutrients and food of concern, the requirement of group v/s individual, information the need of estimation of total v/s relative intake, characteristic of population (age , gender, motivation, education, social and culture patterns and motivation) time period of interest, level of specifications needed for food description, and available resources.

 The study perquisites include skill interviewers with knowledge of data entry and coding along with valid nutrient database.

To estimate dietary pattern of population with different religious backgrounds and diverse eating patterns, the assessment methods must be;

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Appropriate for estimation of desired ;parameters e.g food groups, food supply, food security, nutrients, eating habits, nonnutritive substances.

• Suitable for assessment of different target groups
• Time saving for both for investigators and subjects
• Involve specific training of the investigators nutritional practices.
• Cost effective i.e. financial resources must meet requirement.
• Adequately sensitive and precise with high predictive values.

Assessment under special circumstances:

Group comparisons:

When the purpose of dietary assessment is to compare eating pattern among different population groups, any of the assessment strategies can be followed i.e. short-term approaches including 24 hour recall or long term approaches involving FFQ and food diaries/records of at least a week.

 Selection of method in such situation is governed by presence of representative sample, accuracy of result required, and availability of human and financial resources.

 Most viable approach is to assess dietary pattern of as many people as possible in a single day. Such an of approach is usually used for assessment during national surveys where detailed quantitative data and high response rate are desired since the information obtained is used for several policy intervention.

Individual diet:

When the purpose of dietary assessment is to gather information abut eating habits of individual, the approaches with long term or at least one-week food records are adopted. 

In the situations such as clinical settings where focus of assessment is to get information about the usual eating patterns rather than quantity of food consumption, the diet history is often used approach.

Since, the diet history requires time, an expert interviewers and good recall ability of the respondents to mention what they have eaten over an extended period of time it is not useful to be practiced for large sample size.

 Information regarding eating habits of individual over a longer period of time can be assessed by multiple 24 hour recall or 24 hour food records for an extended duration to help in assessment of seasonal variations.

Although with the help of 24 hour recall useful quantitative information about food consumption can be obtained but on disadvantage of using this method is that it only provide information about food consumption in last 24 hour. FFQ'S approach is more reliable in obtaining adequate information about eating behavior.

Epidemiological studies:

Epidemiological studies involving dietary assessment are usually aimed to identify the role of food and their specific components in occurrence, progression, prevention or treatment of health conditions. These health conditions can be acute i.e. food poisoning or chronic i.e. diabetes and CVD's.

In case of acute anomalies short dietary assessment i.e. recall of food eaten during last 24-48 hours are often helpful since information regarding usual eating habits is not needed fore this purpose. However, for chronic diseases, individual's dietary pattern over a long time period is for;;owed.

Moreover, the epidemiological studies usually involve huge number of participants from different geographic regions. FFQ's are specially designed for such studies owing to their easiness of delivery to respondents via e-mail where they can be self-administrated saving time as against dietary records and diet history.

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