Dietary Assessment in Children 325
4
Misreporting of Intake
All dietary methods are subject to misreporting [2,
8]. This can be due to misunderstanding, memory
lapse, deliberate changes to the diet to make re-
cording easier, deliberate misreporting and so on.
It has been shown that the level of misreporting can
be related to the characteristics of the method (FFQ
often overestimate) or subject (obese people and
adolescents are more likely to under-report) or the
type of food (snacks are more likely to be missed
than meals). Therefore, it is important to take this
into consideration during analysis. There are sev-
eral methods available to assess the level of misre-
porting of energy intake which can be tailored to
the age, sex and size of the individual and take their
usual physical activity level into account [9, 10].
Interpretation
The average nutrient content of the diet can be
used in group analysis but is not accurate at the
individual level [2]. Thus, differences in energy
and nutrient intake between groups of children
can be compared using normal statistical meth-
ods. Often the analysis is performed with and
without the energy reporting status considered,
sometimes with different results obtained. To in-
terpret dietary data, it is also helpful to compare
food group intakes, bearing in mind that the sta-
tistical methods used need to be able to cope with
the fact that some food groups are not eaten at all
by some children. An understanding of differenc-
es in foods eaten can help in the communication
of results to the general public.Conclusion- The diet is a very important part of environ-
mental exposure and integral to the growth
and development of children; therefore, it is
important to study it - The diet is complex and difficult to character-
ise by simple methods; therefore, when start-
ing a project to assess the diet, advanced plan-
ning is the key to success - The chance of obtaining useful dietary data
will be greatly enhanced by obtaining expert
advice at the beginning and building ongoing
nutritional expertise into the project
diet in a large national survey: compari-
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DOI: 10.1159/000367864