A systematic review of reviews identifying UK validated dietary assessment tools for inclusion on an interactive guided website for researchers: www.nutritools.org

Background: Health researchers may struggle to choose suitable validated dietary assessment tools (DATs) for their target population. The aim of this review was to identify and collate information on validated UK DATs and validation studies for inclusion on a website to support researchers to choose appropriate DATs. Design: A systematic review of reviews of DATs was undertaken. DATs validated in UK populations were extracted from the studies identified. A searchable website was designed to display these data. Additionally, mean differences and limits of agreement between test and comparison methods were summarized by a method, weighting by sample size. Results: Over 900 validation results covering 5 life stages, 18 nutrients, 6 dietary assessment methods, and 9 validation method types were extracted from 63 validated DATs which were identified from 68 reviews. These were incorporated into www.nutritools.org. Limits of agreement were determined for about half of validations. Thirty four DATs were FFQs. Only 17 DATs were validated against biomarkers, and only 19 DATs were validated in infant/children/adolescents. Conclusions: The interactive www.nutritools.org website holds extensive validation data identified from this review and can be used to guide researchers to critically compare and choose a suitable DAT for their research question, leading to improvement of nutritional epidemiology research

Traditional methods v. new technologies – dilemmas for dietary assessment in large-scale nutrition surveys and studies: a report following an international panel discussion at the 9th International Conference on Diet and Activity Methods (ICDAM9), Brisbane, 3 September 2015

The aim of the present paper is to summarise current and future applications of dietary assessment technologies in nutrition surveys in developed countries. It includes the discussion of key points and highlights of subsequent developments from a panel discussion to address strengths and weaknesses of traditional dietary assessment methods (food records, FFQ, 24 h recalls, diet history with interviewer-assisted data collection) v. new technology-based dietary assessment methods (web-based and mobile device applications). The panel discussion ‘Traditional methods v. new technologies: dilemmas for dietary assessment in population surveys’, was held at the 9th International Conference on Diet and Activity Methods (ICDAM9), Brisbane, September 2015. Despite respondent and researcher burden, traditional methods have been most commonly used in nutrition surveys. However, dietary assessment technologies offer potential advantages including faster data processing and better data quality. This is a fast-moving field and there is evidence of increasing demand for the use of new technologies amongst the general public and researchers. There is a need for research and investment to support efforts being made to facilitate the inclusion of new technologies for rapid, accurate and representative data

Nutritools.org an innovative website including a food questionnaire creator for dietary assessment in health research

Accurate diet measurement is challenging and strategies to support researchers in selecting the most appropriate dietary assessment tools (DATs) are required. DIET@NET (DIETary Assessment tools NETwork) partnership aimed to create an online resource that provides guidelines for selecting tools with access to validated DATs. The Nutritools website(1) (www.nutritools.org), was developed using 3 approaches. 1) Creation of Best Practice Guidelines(2), enabling researchers to choose the most appropriate DAT for their work. These were generated using the Delphi method which enabled integration of expert views. 2) Creating an interactive DAT e-library, with the DATs being identified through a systematic review of systematic reviews(3). Bubble charts and summary plots are used to compare DATs. 3) Development of a Food Questionnaire Creator (FQC), an online interface between food tables and the DATs which allows users to create their own food questionnaires. This work was overseen by the DIET@NET partnership. Other useful information includes links to food composition databases and a detailed glossary of terms. Results from the systematic review of reviews generated information for Nutritools. The website includes 127 international validated tools, of which 63 tools were validated in the UK (with 45 validated from year 2000 onwards). The majority (n = 34) of the validated tools were food frequency questionnaires, developed from 1981 to 2016. Numbers of foods included ranged from 8–692 items. Five of the 12 dietary recalls included were web-based. Tools were usually validated against another self-reported dietary assessment method, mainly weighed food diaries. More than 1500 papers with non-UK tools were identified, of these, data on 64 international tools and their validation studies were added to Nutritools. The FQC allows for food questionnaires to be created using data from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) Year 6 and the Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset. Results from the NDNS can be used to formulate food questions that capture a large proportion of the nutrients of interest and to inform portion sizes. In conclusion, Nutritools (www.nutritools.org), is an online platform that hosts international validated and interactive DATs. Researchers can use the interactive Best Practice Guidelines and features in the selection of the most appropriate DAT for their study, and the Food Questionnaire Creator to develop their own online food questionnaires. This project was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) (ref: MR/L02019X/1). 1. Warthon-Medina M, Hooson J, Hancock N, et al. (2017) The Lancet 390, pS94. 2. Cade JE, Warthon-Medina M, Albar S, et al. (2017) BMC Medicine 15(1), p202. 3. Hooson J, Hancock N, Greenwood DC, et al. (2016) Proc Nutr Soc 75(OCE3)