Dietary Assessment

Introduction

Although diet is necessary for survival, it been reported as one of the major lifestyle related risk factor of a wide spectrum chronic diseases. Dietary information and changes in the usual or habitual dietary intake could have a serious impact on different diseases. At Individual level, assessing the dietary intake is necessary to determine the person dietary adequacy. At research level, assessment methods are an important part of any dietary studies, which determine how diet influences the health of individuals and populations. Furthermore, to obtain an accurate dietary intake assessment it’s the challenging process that researchers, dieticians and other healthcare professionals are facing. To choose the appropriate tool among

Portion sizes were estimated using household measures or natural unit sizes.

In 7 day weighed food records, the participant recorded details of food and drink eaten at the time of consumption over 7 days. Portions of food were weighed on to a plate using weighing scales. Plate waste was often weighed and recorded separately.

In all the three methods of dietary assessment; information and complete description of the preparation methods, ingredients used, cooking and recipes of mixed dishes, and the brand name of commercial products were recorded.

Data were then entered into Net-WISP (version 4.0) programme taking into consideration the meal and snack basis for each single day. Analysis was performed in compared with DVRs (Dietary Reference Values) for: one day in 24 hour diet recall, mean daily intake in 4 day estimated food records and 7 day weighed food records. Energy, macro and micronutrients were compared and Table1 were generated for all the

The 24 hour diet recall and the estimated or weighed food records could estimate the average intake of a certain population, although multiple 24 hours or food records are needed. 24 hour diet recall is suitable for large scale surveys such as nutritional surveys and while it’s not suitable in young children due to limited in their abilities to estimate portion sizes accurately. Estimated food records are suitable for large-scale prospective studies but its expensive dietary assessment method because investigator need to converts these estimates into weights that can be used to calculate food and nutrient intake. Weighed food records have been used considerably less frequently in recent years as it’s expensive and has intensive participant burden which means that it is not practical for large population studies, that is why it’s suitable for small intervention but it was also used in the national diet and nutrition surveys and was assumed to be the ‘gold standard’ traditionally used for the assessment of dietary